Yet another poppy-like plant - don't misidentify it again

Around July or August, the mountain meadows and stony edges of northern China burst into bloom with manywild poppies(Papaver nudicaule), their lovely yellow flowers stirring the heart.

Newly opened flowers still droop their heads, bashfully half-closed, like a smiling girl; flowers about to fall, however, lift their heads and reveal an already somewhat swollen ovary, stripped of their yellow skirts without mercy by the mountain wind and scattered in a single sweep. Petals as thin as butterfly wings do not fear turning into flower mud, for by the time their color fades, the petals have long since vanished.

Wild poppies among the mountain rocks. Photo: Ameng

When the wind blows, the grass bends low, revealing fresh yellow

Though the genus Papaver has many species, only four wild poppies are native to China, andwidely distributed across the cold regions of the entire Northern Hemispherethe wild poppy is one of them.

The wild poppy is a wildflower; whether on the summit of Baihua Mountain or along the Grassland Sky Road, that bright yellow is its hallmark. On the plains where "when the wind blows, the grass bends low and sheep and cattle appear," the August breeze bends the grass low, and what it reveals is the fresh yellow of the wild poppy.

If you live in the north and have visited the countryside, this splash of fresh yellow is surely familiar. Photo: Ameng

Local people call the wild poppy"mountain poppy", which sounds far less beautiful than the flower itself, and, like a curse, has been arbitrarily pinned on it, making one feel both pity and a hint of fear. The wild poppyloves the coldand fears the heat of summer, so although it is a perennial, in many places it can only be grown as an annual.

If you have read previous articles, you will know that both the field poppy and the wild poppy have largely been tarred with the taboo color of "poppy." The wild poppy's upright fruit is precisely the source of its name - "ying" refers to a lidded jar-shaped pottery vessel, commonly used to hold rice grains, while "su" means millet;the name "ying-su" (poppy) thus describes its fruit and also points to its tiny seeds。

Papaveraceae, divided into two branches

Plants that resemble the opium poppy are mostly given the name "poppy," and although most are toxic, they have not become the evil human taboo that the opium poppy has.

Looking across the Papaveraceae, a family that does not have many species, it clearly clusters into two major groups based on flower form: one is the well-known, eerily beautifulPapaveroideae, and the other is theFumarioideae, with small but extremely vivid flowers. Around these two sister groups, two small subfamilies connect their lineage - the Fumariaceae and the Hypecoaceae are the basal groups of Papaveraceae, tightly pulling together the two branches that could otherwise have gone their separate ways.

A quick look at today's supporting player, Corydalis ambigua of the Fumarioideae. Photo: arudhio / wikimedia

The flowers of Papaveroideae are mostly beautiful, and plants in this subfamily are mostly named "poppy" in both Chinese and English. Beautiful flowers naturally win people's love, and many species in Papaveroideae have been domesticated into garden plants growing around us. Unfortunately, because of the human-stigmatized opium poppy, many people harbor considerable misunderstanding and suspicion toward them.

The most beautiful among Papaveroideae is the genus Meconopsis (himalaya poppy), and many are captivated by its raresky-blue, semi-translucent petals. Unfortunately, this plant from the high plateau rejects most environments; aside from a few slightly heat-tolerant species, most cannot grow in ordinary conditions.

The genus Eschscholtzia (california poppy) from the Americas has flowers resembling the opium poppy, but the colors differ greatly; the former is mostly orange-yellow, and its salmon-red double-flowered garden cultivars are deeply favored. Chelidonium of the northern mountains, though rarely cultivated in gardens, is the most common little wildflower in the north from early summer to autumn.

E. californica of the genus Eschscholtzia. Photo: Johnathan J. Stegeman / wikimedia

C. majus of the genus Chelidonium. Photo: Alvesgaspar / wikimedia

The most "divided" genus Papaver

The genus Papaver, where many beauties gather, has many species, and people love their vivid flowers and often cultivate them. However, among them, the opium poppy (P. somniferum) and the bristly poppy (P. setigerum), becausethe latex of their unripe fruits can be used to extract opium, are banned from cultivation.

Bristly poppy. Photo: Alvesgaspar / wikimedia

Other plants in the genus Papaver are often misunderstood because they look so much like the opium poppy itself, the most famous beingthe field poppy(P. rhoeas). Because in Europe it loves to grow in wheat fields, it is called field poppy.

Three growth stages of the field poppy - bud, flower, fruit. Photo: Alvesgaspar / wikimedia

The oriental poppy (P. orientale) is an exceptionally beautiful plant; it is tall, with huge flowers, often vivid red or pink, and is often mistaken for the opium poppy. The hybrid offspring of the oriental poppy and the brick-red poppy isthe pseudo-oriental poppy(P. xpseudo-orientale), which brought vivid orange-red and pale yellow flowers to the originally monotonous oriental poppy.

Pseudo-oriental poppy. Photo: pixabay

Among cultivated garden varieties, the opium poppy also has some highly variable ornamental variants. The peony poppy (P. s. var. peoniflorum) has the greatest number of petals among the two double-flowered variants of the opium poppy; because its stamens have become petal-like, it sets fruit poorly and its fruits are small, so opium cannot be extracted from it. Even so,aside from flower morphology and the number of capsules, the peony poppy, as a variant of the opium poppy, looks exactly the same as the opium poppy, and to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding, private cultivation is not recommended.

In addition, the common double-flowered opium poppy and the large-fruited opium poppy variant, because their fruits are rich in papaverine, are also banned from cultivation.

Peony poppy. Photo: garden.org

Among the many cultivated poppies, there is one whose flower shape is close to the opium poppy itself, while the plant is close to the field poppy, and this isthe Iceland poppy. Although the Iceland poppy is translated from iceland poppy, itdoes not originate from Iceland, but is a cultivated form of the wild poppy growing near the Arctic Circle. Compared with the wild poppy common in northern China, it is a larger plant, with considerably bigger flowers and a much richer range of colors.

Iceland poppies in diverse colors. Photo: seedempire.com

I have always marveled that humans could, through the yellow wild poppy, breed orange-red and pink Iceland poppies that do not exist in nature. Yet when I stood atop Mount Taibai and saw a clump of orange-red wild poppies swaying in the mountain wind, I felt that compared with nature, I was still far too naive.

Orange-red wild poppies. Photo: Ameng

This article is the 228th piece in Year 4 of Species Calendar, from Species Calendar author @Ameng.

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Papaveraceae, Meconopsis horridula