Growing poppies

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jonohoff1988

New Member
I am trying to grow the fun kind of poppies and just have a trial run going right now before grow season. Can anyone tell me if either of these are the right kind of seeds? You can see there are 2 different types of poppy plants in the photo. Are both of them the fun type or is 1 of them the fun type?
 

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Phytoplankton

Well-Known Member
What seeds did you use? For the most part you need a flower/seed pod to determine species There are ton of different species and cultivars of poppies, most have no pharmacological use, other than many being cardiac toxins. As I recall the boxed poppy seeds that they sell in the grocery store used to be the fun kind, they didn't use to sterilize them, but they may now. BTW, raw poppy "gum" has some other nasty alkaloids in it and can be toxic in small amounts. Also, several different species of poppies get the same looking seed pods, and to determine species you have to count the numbers of "edges" on the pod.
 
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Phytoplankton

Well-Known Member
Ozumoz66 said:
The flowers are pink and they have grown wild here since we purchased the place in 99. Previous owner was from Belgium.
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Nice, I used to live in an area that had a small Chinese population around the 1870’s, and the poppies grew around a lot of the older mansions (where the immigrants worked). The flowers can be several different colors (white, red, purple, mauve).
 
Mumbeltypeg

Mumbeltypeg

Well-Known Member
Phytoplankton said:
What seeds did you use? For the most part you need a flower/seed pod to determine species There are ton of different species and cultivars of poppies, most have no pharmacological use, other than many being cardiac toxins. As I recall the boxed poppy seeds that they sell in the grocery store used to be the fun kind, they didn't use to sterilize them, but they may now. BTW, raw poppy "gum" has some other nasty alkaloids in it and can be toxic in small amounts. Also, several different species of poppies get the same looking seed pods, and to determine species you have to count the numbers of "edges" on the pod.
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I thought the dried “gum” as in the milksap collected after scraping the pod before flower was pretty much all opium is?
 
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Michaela15

New Member
From what I can see in the pictures, one of the plants is probablly Papaver somniferum, the "fun" kind, from which various extracts, include opium, can be made. The other one is likely a common garden poppy.
Make sure to check the seeds – if they're from edible poppy seeds, it's probably for decorative purposes. Also, remember that growing poppies for personal use might be illegal in some places. Better check local laws to avoid any trouble later:|.
 
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