Pedant's corner

Papaver rhoeas

You know your interest in horticulture has 'jumped the shark' when you're reading your friends sincere and affecting Armistice Day comments on Facebook and viewing their updated profile pictures for the day, and looking at one very beautiful illustration you find yourself thinking 'that's not a poppy!  It's an anemone!  It's got six petals, so it's a monocotyledon, but poppies are dicots, and...'

It's an easy enough mistake to make at first glance.  Anemone coronaria 'de Caen' has a big flat single flower and a common cultivar is the same deep blood red shade as the Flanders Poppy with a black centre.  But it does have six petals rather than the four of the wild poppy, Papaver rhoeas, and they are very significantly different plants, since Papaver rhoeas is an annual raised from seed and Anemone de Caen are herbaceous perennials produced from corms.  And for those of you who like the scientific stuff, anemones are monocotyledons (ie. they have one 'seed leaf') while poppies are dicotyledons (two seed leaves) so in that great family tree of green things, branched off from each other a long, long time ago...

Another Field Poppy

Regarding poppies, it's important not to confuse Papaver rhoeas with the perennial Papaver orientalis or another annual, Papaver somniferum, the 'Opium Poppy'.  It is entirely legal to grow P. somniferum as a garden ornamental but mess about with it otherwise and the long arm of the law is going to be reaching your way!  

It would be a suitably geeky move at this stage to include photographs of both P. rhoeas and A. coronaria looking deceptively similar, but while I am awash with poppy pics of my own, since I love them and grow them enthusiastically, I've never had any luck growing anemone de Caen (I suspect slugs) and although I have some photos taken at Biddulph Grange, they seem to be of any colour except red.  So, alas, I have to refer those of you keen on further information to the redoubtable Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemone_coronaria

If the contents of this article are correct, the Anemone coincidentally makes a very acceptable substitute for the Flanders Poppy, since it can appear naturally in huge drifts throughout the Middle East in countries sadly all too used to war and conflict, and allegedly even has an association with the British Army from the red berets worn by British Troops in Palestine in the 1940s.

So even the horticultural pedant should probably concede that it isn't what flower you choose, it's the thought that counts.