What do poppies do ?

I have a few perennial poppies - Papaver orientale. They are lovely - but flower for such a short time. This year I bought some annuals - Papaver somniferum, which I have never grown before. On the packet it says will flower from June to October, which attracted me.

Do they go on flowering for a long period, or does the packet mean that they will flower for just two days anytime between June and October? How big do they grow sideways, and how many flower heads can they get? At the moment they consist of just a single stalk and head.

Any experience would be most helpful.

 

The opium poppy - mmm, as I recall it has one flower per stem, and the flower lasts just a few days. Not sure if it produced additional stems to give it that advertised flowering time - maybe if its deadheaded.

 

I have the ordinary red poppies that self-seed in my garden every year. They are gorgeous and have been flowering their socks off for weeks.

 

Thanks Fran and Tiarella. Tiarella, how come they have been flowering for weeks. I presume that each flower only lasts a short time. Do you get more than one flower per plant. Presumably the long flowering period is due to the fact that you have a large number of plants that have germinated (and hence flowered) at different times.

In my case I sowed all the seeds in a seed tray - they all germinated together and they are all flowering together. So I am not too hopeful of a long season.

 

Where I go to walk the dog is next to some allotments, poppies have been flowering on this land for a few weeks, double ones, single, red, purple etc etc.
It tends to be whole groups but there are some single ones too.

 

Hi Peter -

I'm no expert but this is my experience.
I threw down lots of poppy seeds this year as I'm trying to create a garden from a field and seeds are much cheaper than potted plants. All in all they have been wonderful and just keep on flowering. There are too many seed heads to dead head so I've left most of them. Just the wind and rain flattened some but the rest just seem to keep on going. I'm hoping they will self seed for next year but will collect some seeds myself and keep them for next spring.

This is just a small part of what they looked like about a month ago and they are still going strong.



I've also got a single poppy growing in our gravel drive. Haven't a clue where it came from and so far it has had six flowers on it one after the other. I haven't the heart to pull it up.

 

I walked past a garden just last week and there was just 1 double poppy in it, ive past today and its still in flower.
My guess is the better the poppy the longer they last, mine has only flowerd for about 3 days but there are quite a lot of them.
Kryssy your red 1 is

 

Hi Peter

Yes, I have more than one plant and they are rather large with masses of flowers on each - see here:

I never planted any - they just grew!!