Papaver Orientale
Oh how I love Papaver Orientale!
These perennial poppies bring me so much happiness during the two weeks they bloom in our climate.
Burn the cut end of the stem immediately after harvest so that they don’t wilt, I use a lighter—much easier than matches. Same trick for Icelandic poppies and Breadseed poppies too.
They go dormant for the year after they finish blooming, similar to Bearded Iris, and prefer to grow in a hot and sunny flower bed that does not get irrigation during the summer, do not plant them with your flowers that need watering—they don’t like it and will sulk. We plant them at the edges of our flower beds where the sprinkler doesn’t reach.
The variety here is the peachy pink Victoria Louise.
You can dig and divide plants in late fall or early winter and it’s also very easy to do root cuttings of them at that time as well.
A darker, more saturated coral-pink variety called Coral Reef.
