Poppy
Papaver sp. · Garden flowers
Inside a poppy
Great Dixter, 8 June 2025
Looking straight down into a poppy at the ring of stamens around the ridged, sunburst seed capsule at the centre.
The capsule's own pattern, radiating lines under a flattened cap, is what eventually splits into pores once the seed is ripe. The capsule then works like a pepper pot: the wind rocks the stem and the seeds are shaken out through the holes, a few at a time, over weeks.
Poppy
Goodnestone, 1 June 2024
Tissue-paper petals around a ridged green seed capsule and a ring of dark stamens - a garden poppy, probably one of the Shirley strains bred up from the wild corn poppy. Shirley poppies began in a Surrey vicarage garden in 1880, when the Reverend William Wilks noticed one corn poppy with a white edge to its petals and spent years selecting from it; every one since is descended from that single flower.
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