Poppies

[John P]

In an area of grass outside a supermarket there were loads of wild poppies coming up. They were all red except for 1 white one. This appeared to be a fluke of nature.

John

[John P]

My post from the EPS yesterday.

"I put a post on another forum I belong to a few days ago. It was about poppies. So far no response from anyone. It puts me off posting in future."

John

[Paul S]

They are native poppies, John. Forum title is:

PUSHING THE BORDERS
A forum for people interested in pushing what can be grown in their gardens

I am not sure poppies qualify.

Having said that there have been many occasions when I have posted about stuff that really is 'pushing the borders' and had no replies, either. It is just the spasmodic nature of internet forums.

[John P]

Thanks Paul.

John

[Chad]

There are some posts that I can't think of anything to add .

Look at Martin's post on Hodnet.

Excellent post, but I can't think of anything to add.

So I haven't.

What would you have liked us to add to the poppies post?

Chad

[John P]

Chad thanks for your feed back. They were not planted , it was just nature at work. There were hundreds of red poppies and just 1 white one. I have only ever seen red ones growing wild.

Bill who is a prominent exotic plant grower located near Watford planted a large area of a grass hill on his land with wild flowers. Wild poppies are grown by some gardeners.

The reason I posted about poppies was to try and generate some forum activity. I was interested to know how common wild white poppies are.

John

[Chad]

I was interested to know how common wild white poppies are.

OK, that I can work with.

Papaver rhoeas is probably not a UK native, but has been growing here for as long as grain has been farmed. Which makes it a synanthropic archaeophyte.

As a cornfield 'weed' it has become scarce, primarily through better automated seed cleaning even though the use of selective herbicides can't have helped.

Pure 'wild' forms probably no longer exist, with pollen transfer from garden selected colour forms contaminating all 'wildflower' mixes.

White poppies occured in Flanders Fields often enough to be visible. But you would only need one white one in a field for it to show up.

In an urban environment, as is your example, there is a high probability that they, or their parents, are from horticultural stock, so colour variants are even more likely.

Chad

[charlie]

I did reply John but fell foul to the "Missing posts" problem. I have started an investigation. any way chad has covered more or less what I said!!

[MartinNicklin]

A similar phenomenon was photographed by me and put on GOTE a few years ago. A clump of white bluebells in amongst the swathes of blue ones we have in the woods at the bottom of my street. It was not the Spanish bluebell infiltrators but an exact copy of our delightful native just in white form. I’d never seen it before but I was told they aren’t that uncommon. Nevertheless, like your white poppy, very eye catching.
To be honest John I often post things I just would like an answer to, just because I know there are experts who contribute to this forum! I suppose that would count as blatant misuse of this forum to my own end! Are you a member of Unusual Plants UK FB group?

[John P]

Martin thanks your response. I have some white UK bluebells and they have crossed with my blue ones to produce some pink ones.

On the EPS we are palm society but discuss any exotic plants, not just palms. I am not sure I would do wild poppies as a thread on there but it seemed more appropriate here and it has raised an interesting discussion. I too felt some of the knowledgeable plant people on here would throw a light.

I do belong to Facebook but except for the very occasional post on the EPS Facebook, I avoid it. A number of EPS members that used to post on the EPS forum have defected there. I still like forums and would post more on here if I was more knowledgeable on unusual plants.

John