Poppies in My Flower Garden
My flower garden continues to produce many colorful and beautiful blooms.
This cutting garden has developed so well over the last couple of seasons. I really enjoy comparing its progress from year to year, and seeing where I need to add more plants to improve the display. Right now, there are gorgeous poppies blooming everywhere - those colorful tissue paper-like flowers that look stunning both in the garden and in the vase.
Enjoy these photos.
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- Poppies are flowering plants in the subfamily Papaveroideae of the family Papaveraceae. They produce open single flowers gracefully located on long thin stems, sometimes fluffy with many petals and sometimes smooth.
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- My flower garden is brimming with pink, white, and lavender poppies in a variety of forms.
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- Poppies are attractive, easy-to-grow herbaceous annual, biennial or short-lived perennial plants.
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- The plants typically grow to about two feet in height forming colorful flowers during spring and into summer.
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- Flowers have four to six petals, many stamens forming a conspicuous whorl in the center of the flower and an ovary of two to many fused carpels. The petals are showy and may be almost any color.
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- These poppies have delicate light pink petals with darker pink centers. Poppies have lobed or dissected leaves and milky sap.
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- Poppies require very little care, whether they are sown from seed or planted when young – they just need full sun and well-drained soil.
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- One tip – only water once per week during weeks that receive less than two inches of natural rainfall. And don’t splash any water on the foliage; moist leaves are more susceptible to pests and diseases.
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- This lavender bloom has both frilly and shaggy petals adding lots of texture to the garden.
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- And this reddish poppy with a dark purple center is still unfurling.
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- This medium poppy is smaller, more dainty, and more tissue paper-like in appearance.
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- Some poppies are quite small – this one less than two inches in diameter. For most species, deadhead spent blooms to prolong flowering.
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- The breadseed poppy, Papaver somniferum, is a stiff, erect two to four-foot annual with lettuce type leaves that wrap around the stem. The flower buds are pendulous and coarsely hairy, but become upright when open.
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- Breadseed poppies resent transplanting and do best when direct sown. Plant directly into the garden after all danger of frost has passed. This one is white with a dark purple center.
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- Here is another poppy in light pink with a bright green center.
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- Though flowers are packed full of petals, their stems are strong enough to support the weight.
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- These flowers come in many colors including bright white. This poppy has a long stem and a delicate, crisp white bloom.
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- This white poppy has a bright yellow center. When planting outdoors, space poppies a few inches apart to provide good air circulation and to help prevent powdery mildew.
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- Poppy flowers are attractive to pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
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- These are California poppies, a short-lived perennial, named the official state flower in 1903.
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- And here is a poppy seed pod, which is what’s left on the stem once the flower blooms and the petals fall off. When the seed heads turn brown, they will be cut and the seeds inside will be harvested. What are your favorite poppies? Let me know in the comments section below.
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