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Poppies deserve a place in any landscape: in wildflower and meadow plantings, perennial borders, cutting gardens or mixed-shrub borders. Their flower colors range from vibrant to subdued-from deepest crimson, bright orange and yellow to soft pink, dusky peach, rose, lilac and cream. Flowers may be single, double or semidouble, with amazing texture and size. The
Iceland poppy produces flowers up to seven inches across above attractive
blue-green, segmented foliage. The Shirley poppy bears single or
double crepe-paper-like blooms edged with white. Field, or Flanders,
poppies sport single, crimson flowers, which suit wildflower plantings
perfectly. The National Garden Bureau designates 2003 as the ‘Year
of the Poppy’ because it is quite probably the most popular
wildflower in America. In
a border garden, poppies combine beautifully with lamb’s ears,
cornflowers, larkspur, Shasta daisy, and veronica. For a meadow
look, you cannot go wrong with a sowing of poppies among lupine,
coreopsis, Indian blanket, black-eyed Susan, and cornflower-the
colors complement each other and the various plants extend the flowering
season into fall. The beauty of poppy blooms is like a magnificent
sunset, somewhat fleeting. Flowers appear primarily in the spring
or fall when cool temperatures prevail. Poppies vary in height from 2 to 3 feet tall, although there are dwarf strains of the Iceland poppy that reach only 12 inches. The latter work well in rock gardens, in containers, and at the front edge of a border. Most poppies look good in the middle or towards the rear of perennial beds. What’s
in a Name? The
annual poppy, P. rhoeas (pronounced row-ays), which gardeners have
cultivated for centuries, goes by a variety of common names, from
corn or field poppy to Flanders poppy and Shirley poppy. The “corn”
of corn poppy does not, as some people assume, refer only to its
habit of showing up in cornfields. Corn is Old English for seed
and from korn, the Greek word for grain; the seed in this case refers
to fields of grains like rye, wheat and oat. Poppy seeds may lie
dormant in soil for years and germinate when the soil is disturbed,
as by a plow. Flanders
poppy is the single, red flower that carpeted fields in Flanders
in western Europe, noticed especially during World War I. It became
famous when John McCrae, a Canadian soldier, wrote a poem about
it in 1917 commemorating the soldiers who had died: “In Flanders
Fields, the poppies grow/Between the crosses, row on row....”
The Shirley poppy also has an interesting history, which you can
read about in the next section. The
Iceland poppy, P. nudaucaule (new-dih-caw-lee), a perennial, isn’t
actually from Iceland but from Asia. It undoubtedly cross-pollinated
in the wild and in gardens with a few of its closely related species,
including P. radicatum, which is from Iceland. Most catalogs list
the Iceland poppy as P. nudaucaule, and, no matter what species
name it goes by, it is very easy to grow from seed. It is winter-hardy
from Zones 2 to 8. Other poppies include the perennial Alpine poppy (P. alpinum and other diminutive species), which fit beautifully in rock gardens and the perennial Oriental poppy, P. orientale, which gardeners usually grow from root divisions not seeds. Poppies
at a Glance
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Courtesy
of National Garden Bureau
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