What Does Opium Have To Do With Poppies

What opium has to do with poppies is it is found makeup of this plant; opium is found in the pods and is extracted over several days time by placing slices in the pods. There are many different species of poppies and each specie has a concentrated amount of opium contained in it, however it is the papaver somnife that contains a high amount of the opium and is illegal to be grown in many countries. This is because this is a poppy from which opium is extracted for legal and illegal use.

In areas where the poppy is grown for its opium content there is an extraction process that takes several days, starting with using a special tool, which is used to place slices in the pod at a specific time before the plant, begins to bloom. The slices allow a milky substance to leak from the pod and is left to dry, the substance will dry into a gummy type of material and is in taken off of the pod. This slicing will be done approximately two more times on the pod and each time the pod will release the substance. This substance is opium, which can then be, processed further right in the fields when it is for illegal use.

When a opium is extracted from the poppy pod it is done when there is no inclement weather or winds expected the so that the substance that seeps from the slices in the pod will dry.