Common Poppy (Papaver rhoeas)
- When the bund was put in place on Cowbar for 2022, clumps of red poppies came through in the spring, even though they had not been in the wildflower mix of seeds sown. It flowers from June into September.
- These poppies are often the some of the first things to come through on disturbed ground. The Cowbar poppies were probably in the soil and responded to the ground being disturbed.
- They were often agricultural ‘weeds’ and appear in fallow fields still. They are now in decline because of intensive agricultural practices and use of herbicides.
- Their common names include common poppy, corn poppy, corn rose, field poppy, Flanders poppy, and red poppy.
- In the language of flowers, it stands for consolation.
- Its image appears on a number of postage stamps, coins, banknotes, and national flags, including in Canada and Romania.
- In China its name – ‘yumeiren’ – means ‘Yu the beauty’ and in Persian poetry the poppy is a symbol of those who dies for love.
- The Egyptians and Romans who made garlands of Common poppies to celebrate the gods and ensure the fertility of their crops.
- The black seeds are edible. They can be eaten on their own or used as an ingredient in bread.
- The petals contain a red dye which is used in some medicines and wines.
- In traditional folk medicine, it was used for gout, aches, and pains. The petals were used to create a syrup that was fed to children to help them sleep.
- This poppy is a famous symbol of remembrance of soldiers who fell during World War One onwards. Corn poppies bloomed, blood red, between the trench lines and no-man’s-land on the Western front where the ground was so badly disturbed.
- The symbolism became a focus for remembrance after a poem by Canadian John McCrae. He was a poet who was also a surgeon and medical officer on the front lines. Sitting in an ambulance on 3 May 1915, he wrote the poem “In Flanders Field”the day after personally conducting a burial service for a friend, Alexis Helmer. In 1918, Moina Michael, read and was moved by the poem in New York. She went out that afternoon and managed to find some artificial poppies and handed out 25 keeping one herself. The tradition was born.
- It is the county flower of both Essex and Norfolk.
