Poppy Botanical Information

The poppy is a flower that is botanically known to be from the family Papavereaceae and there are more than 200 species of the Papaver family, including Papaver somniferum or the opium poppy. They are members of the Plantae kingdom, their division is magnoliophyta and class is Magnoliopsida. They are from the botanical order Ranunculales and from the Papaveraceae family, their genus is Papaver.

The poppy is a flower that has many sub groups in its species and while some are native to certain areas there are others that are able to be grown in most parts of the world as long as they have the proper soil and light conditions.

Out of all the different poppy species the only one that contains opium is Papaver somniferum and this species contains enough the alkaloid to make medications and for illegal drug use. The other poppy species do not contain enough alkaloids to produce opium. The species that do contain a low amount for opium is less than 10% while species like the Norman have as little as 1%.

The floral on these plants are also was varied as there are species, there are single blooms with four petals or six petals. There are also her gigantic ruffled such as the French Flounce and the Carnation Poppy. Some poppy flowers are purposely grown because of the amount of seeds they hold like that of the Hungarian Breadseed, this flower contains large capsules which each contains thousands of seeds. From the seeds bakers in this region are famous for their poppy seed cake and their poppy seeds glazed yeast breads.