Pop Goes the Poppy

I spent an hour or so early last Friday morning watching the first annual poppy of the year pop into bloom. It’s called Lauren’s Grape, Papaver somniferum, obviously for the colour, but I wondered who Lauren is? Is it a real person? Are they alive?

I went down the internet rabbit hole early this morning – it’s raining so I can justify not going out for a run on this last day of spring – and discovered Lauren is a real person, alive and well (despite some seed companies describing the poppy as ‘heirloom’ – what’s up with that???) and she is indeed responsible for cultivating this delicious looking opium poppy. Lauren Springer lives in Colorado, in fact, and is a well known horticulturalist and garden writer, currently working at a public garden called The Gardens on Spring Creek, in Fort Collins. Colorado gardening myth says Lauren sowed some seeds from a bagel and up popped these deep purple beauties! Not true, of course; it took years of selecting the best purples from her garden to come up with this selection. Still…makes a good story!

Back to my garden, and the opening poppy. Here’s one view:

And from the top:

Seeds for this poppy are now available from dozens and dozens of seed companies around the world – I do hope Ms. Springer is raking in the royalties – but the truth is if you have them once in your garden you’ll have them, if you want, forever. They self seed remarkably well in my garden, and each seed pod if allowed to ripen has hundreds of new seeds. I discovered that if sown in the spring they won’t show up – they need a winter’s stratification (must be those Colorado mountain origins!). And, although seed sites say they grow to three or four feet high (up to a metre!) they rarely reach above two feet in my garden. But that may be because they’re in a never watered gravelly patch.

I’ve tried growing a few other annual poppies with not much luck (although this year some seeds sent by a gardening friend seem to have germinated and are looking strong…no flower buds yet but my fingers are crossed..and I’m not counting the California poppies that come back year after year in the kitchen garden) but Lauren’s Grape keeps coming back. Happy Summer everyone!