Edible poppy seeds?

I have poppies growing in my garden every year and wondered whether I can use the seeds in cooking. I never sowed them, so I have no idea what the variety is, but they look like the common poppy which, I think, is the Flanders Poppy.

TIA

 

That is not the poppy for cooking. in any case the seed will be dust like. Is it Papaver somniflorum that produces the edible seeds? The same one that produces opium in hotter climes - the opium comes from the sap or whatever it is that they draw out of the seed heads. Our climate does not produce enough of the opiates. i read that the dried seed head makes a natural seed shaker.
They will also self seed like crazy but they take two years to flower as they are biennial.

 

They are annuals, so sow them in the spring and they will flower the same year.

Why not try sowing some shop bought cullinary seed, and see what comes up!

 

Thanks both!

Having asked the question (because I couldn't find an answer on the Internet) I, again, did an Internet search but this time (when I put all the answers together) found the following.

The poppy seeds used in cooking and baking are the seeds of the Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum) and I could grow them from the seeds except that it is illegal to do so - I would be growing drugs!

Apparently, these seeds are, also, in the wild bird seed I put out - so now I know what those lovely ornamental poppies are that grow in my lawn each spring! I've let them grow in the past but now I'll have to make sure that they're pulled up, which is a pity but I don't want to be locked up!

I was hoping that, while the opium seeds are used in cooking, other poopy seeds might be edible but it seems, from the Internet, they're not.

Thanks again for your replies.

 

It's not illegal (in the UK) to grow them!.. it is illegal to process them for drugs.... (so don't!) but for ornamental or culinary uses.. they're fine!

 

I think traditionally they were sown late to flower the following year. As I said they don't produce enough opiates to make them illegal in this country. Much of what you get on the web is US centric. There was a case a year or so back where an English couple had a house in Italy and the poppies had self sown in their garden. The locals did not warn them that it was illegal to grow them in that country and they ended up being arrested.
Lovely flowers but the leaves are a bit cabbagey. The seed pods are impressive.

 

Fortunately the British legal view is a bit more sensible than in some other countries. There are many 'drugs' that can and do grow in the UK, quite legally. As Quercus said, it is when you process them that you fall foul of the law.

In fact, I submitted a load of Opium poppy seeds to the seed swap program managed on this very forum. If they are grown as garden ornamentals then they're perfectly legal.

If we were to worry about plants that could, in some contexts, be described as drugs, we'd have to ban loads of plants. Foxgloves would have to go because it can be processed to make heart drugs, common broom would have to go because it contains a potent narcotic. Even some culinary herbs would have to go because processed in the right way they can produce various proven physiological effects. One of the most common pharmaceutical drugs used, apirin, is a synthetic version of a naturally occuring chemical found in the bark of willow trees, so we'd have to bin willows. The list goes on and on.

I think, as a general rule of thumb, if it is a drug in its raw form, it is usually best to leave it be. If it requires processing then usually it is ok. There are of course exceptions, so don't take that as gospel.

 

I am afraid I would have to disagree with your reasoning here Clueless. They don't ban drugs such as medical drugs because they are not on a list of banned substances. If you think it is OK to grow stuff as long as you don't process it try growing cannabis plants. When the fuzz have kicked your door down I think the excuse that you were not intending to process it would not impress a judge.

 

Yes, sorry, I was generalising a bit too much. Cannabis doesn't require any form of processing to be a banned substance. You could, if you were so inclined, smoke it or make a brew from it straight from harvest.

A plant doesn't have to contain a banned substance for its processing to be illegal though. Take the tobacco plant, baccy is not a banned substance, but see how quick you get done if you grow baccy and sell it without a license and without paying the tax on it, yet you can perfectly legally grow the tobacco plant in your garden for its flowers.

The law is, in parts, not black and white. For example there are certain mushrooms that grow wild, in the Aminita family, that you are most definitely not allowed to grow because in their unprocessed form they contain high levels of a banned substance. However if they happen to grow in your garden then no offence has been committed, as long as you didn't put them there and you don't do anything with them.

As I said, I generalised a bit too much in my previous post, and didn't make my point very well. My point is just that just because something can in certain circumstances be processed to produce a banned substance, it doesn't automatically follow that it is illegal to grow it. Opium poppies are perfectly legal. You can buy the seeds from numerous legitimate sources, and numerous public gardens have great swathes of them growing for all to see.

 

You can grow ordinary roll your own tobacco, process it yourself and smoke yourself to death literally and its legal or it was last time i saw the seeds being sold. It becomes illegal if you sell it. I think that is more of a customs and excise thing, they are missing out on their baccy duty.
The opium poppies don't produce enough of the opiates in our cold climate to make it worth banning. Now if the climate keeps warming and we end up like the Mediterranean................???

 

Thanks Geoff and all of you who replied.

That's good news about the poppy seeds! On my allotment, there is a Vietnamese lady who grows these beautiful poppies and I have some of her seeds to sow in my garden, next year. After reading your replies, I checked on the Internet and am convinced, from the images I've seen, that her poppies are, in fact, opium poppies and she muct grow them for her Vietnamese dishes. I never thought but will ask her next time I see her.

Thanks again, to all of you!

 

What an interesting thread and answers the question I've been wondering about for a bit.
As I use lots of poppy seed in my baking and sunflowers seeds in my bread I'd hoped to harvest my own.

 

Hi Snowdrop! My wife uses poppy seeds in her baking and cooking. Now I know that growing the opium poppy is the right one to grow and isn't illegal to do so (T & M sell the seeds), I shall be growing them myself in future. There's a man on my allotment whose Vietnamese wife is always growng them (I can recognise them now having seen photographs of them!) and she gave me many seed heads from her poppies, which I grew but didn't save the seeds for cooking, just re-sowing. Next year will be different!

What may be of interest to you is that my wife has, also, had trouble finding onion seeds for cooking and I only realised, a few weeks back, that, while I grow a great deal of onions throughout the year, I always cut any seed heads off that I see! Next year I'll let several onions just go to seed.

Thanks for your reply!