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Another plant id
Essex-rose
Posts: 4
in Plants
help I must had either planted this as a bare root/bulb that was mis named in its packet or I disturbed an old root and this sprung up. I was messing in this small bed last year but nothing I thought planted should have looked like this. I'm at a loss to what it is. It's pretty big too. Spring up all of a sudden
thanks in advance
Last edited: 23 May 2016 21:20:42
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Posts
hi Essex, it's a poppy, they grow like weeds in my dads garden and he pulls them out. I've tried transplanting them into mine and they never take. I scatter lots of seeds and get the odd one growing.
I wish I had it!
Wow thank you so much for the quick response. Must hace been a bird dropped it. It's only there in one place in the front garden and one spot in the back garden, both beds I'd cleared and planted a tonne of bare root and bulbs last October so lit confused me when that sprung up unexpectedly
at last I know what it is. Good job I didn't let my husband get hold of it. He keeps saying pull it up its a weed. I said no let's see what happens and I was right.
Good job I'm the keen gardener (novice) and he's my labourer lol :-)
Opium poppy. Papaver somniferum. Its the same stuff they cultivate for opium production, but we don't get long enough days of sunshine here to produce a worthwhile amount of alkaloid. Enjoy the flowers. Scatter the seed around and you should get more next year.
Poppy seeds can live a very long time in soil, until the conditions are right for them to germinate. (They need freshly disturbed soil to start growing - hence the wild poppies growing around the trenches after WW1.) You say you'd cleared the bed, and that was just what your poppy seed had been waiting for...
They grow like weeds in my garden, springing up everywhere. I hate doing it but I have to have a 'culling ' session as they don't transplant well at all. Very pretty,and once you have them in your garden you will always have them!