poppies

[mellowtigger]

I went outside this morning (before the drizzle started) and saw that the poppies have opened.  What started from a single red california poppy left over from the previous residents has now grown into two small areas full of them.  (One of those areas was unintentional.  The seeds looked just like the strawberry-spinach, so I threw down a lot of them this year.  Oops.)

I see that I have both pink and red.  How is it that they end up looking square?



I don't suppose anyone would know what this plant is?  I dug it up this morning because of the crowding, but I might rescue some seeds if it has an interesting story to it.



The flowers look almost vicious.

Comments

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

There are some plant identification sites out there. Try this one (http://www.colby.edu/info.tech/BI211/PlantFamilyID.html) for flowering plants.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

they are beautiful

may I be a tiny bit pedantic?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Poppy

What you have is a true poppy, probably a Laciniatum cultivar of Papaver somniferum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaver_somniferum

The second plant is common milkweed, Asclepia syriaca, which is very invasive, but the flowers have an exquisite scent at dusk, and the seeds are of course pretty interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepias_syriaca

[mellowtigger]

Gah! Am I going to have to remove all of them because of a stupid law somewhere?

When the plants don't get as much sunlight, the flower ends up being smaller and less ornate. Closer to the "california poppy" photo, but still too ornate in the center of the flower, obviously. I guess it really is the other kind. I think I'll call it a "garden poppy", as "the illegal kind" doesn't seem nearly as suburban. :)


Milkweek, interesting. I wouldn't have thought to look for that name. Out in West Texas we used the term milkweed for a very different plant. (But what can you expect. We use the term locust instead of cicadas.)

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about your poppies, it might theoretically be illegal but that law is never enforced; they don't even *look* like the kind grown commercially for opium, anyway. And you'd have to be growing a *lot* of these (like, an acre or more) before there was suspicion of commercial quantities being produced.

What does "milkweed" mean in TX?

[mellowtigger]

We have something very similar growing in the garden now. I've been pulling them out, but I found one still there this morning.



In West Texas, the leaves of the plant were not as big as this one's. At it hugged the ground closely rather than branching upwards like this. Break one of the stems, though, and it would produce a large drop of milky white fluid. "Milkweed". :)

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

hmmm, I don't think that's any kind of Aesclepia, but I have no idea what is *is*.