Opium poppies

martinthebandit

There were several fields full of them round here two or three years ago.

shortcrust

Davesnave wrote: »

Err....I may be completely out of my head on tea this morning, but from my brief research, it appears TonyMMM has never started a thread.


Are you seeing things that aren't there? I remember that!

Oh! Well I can’t be expected to scroll all the way to the top of the page to check these things...:o

Davesnave

They get around. Last year, the papaver somniferum were at the top of the garden with the ornamentals and this year they're among the veg down at the bottom. It's a nice deep red with darker tones which just appeared, so probably here long before us.

If people want these in a specific colour, amount of doubleness etc, both Special Plants and Chiltern have some to choose from.

GreenQueen

My granny who was the original "old wife" of old wives tales used to say "if you sniff a poppy, you'll go to sleep and never wake up"! Way to scare a 7 year old:eek:

This from the woman who had a stuffed squirrel, and told me if i touched it, it would bite my finger off...

Ebe_Scrooge

GreenQueen wrote: »

My granny who was the original "old wife" of old wives tales used to say "if you sniff a poppy, you'll go to sleep and never wake up"!

I always assumed that was the implication behind that scene in The Wizard Of Oz - where they're walking through a field of poppies and fall asleep ..... They were knocked out by copious amounts of Opium fumes :-)

Ganga

GreenQueen wrote: »

My granny who was the original "old wife" of old wives tales used to say "if you sniff a poppy, you'll go to sleep and never wake up"! Way to scare a 7 year old:eek:

This from the woman who had a stuffed squirrel, and told me if i touched it, it would bite my finger off...

And did it? :rotfl::rotfl:

GreenQueen

Don't know whether it would have, I was always too scared to go near it!

BTW it was the most moth-eaten, disgusting thing I have ever seen. Think it was a DIY taxidermy job. Assume that my dad chucked it when she died, I don't remember seeing it after that.

Mr_Singleton

Farway wrote: »

in case your posting was drug related, UK summers are not hot enough to produce the hallucination stuff in the sap

Errrr No! I was just finishing a good book about Burma A Savage Dreamland which has a bit on the Opium trade. Looked up an image on google through interest and low and behold it looked exactly like the poppies that were everywhere when I was a child. Now if there was a 'weed' plant the Police (I assume) would be there faster than you could say " hello, hello, hello what do we have here!"

Davesnave

Mr_Singleton wrote: »

Now if there was a 'weed' plant the Police (I assume) would be there faster than you could say " hello, hello, hello what do we have here!"

Not necessarily. Back in the 80s, some joker in our city secreted small cannabis seedlings in the police station decorative planters at their front entrance.

It was a member of the public who spotted them and told the local rag, by which time they were quite established.:rotfl:

elsiepac

Davesnave wrote: »

Not necessarily. Back in the 80s, some joker in our city secreted small cannabis seedlings in the police station decorative planters at their front entrance.

It was a member of the public who spotted them and told the local rag, by which time they were quite established.:rotfl:

Oh that's hilarious!!