Earlier today I came across this passage in the The Morville Hours. It gave me pause for thought, so I thought I would share it with you.

The wearing of scarlet poppies and the laying of poppy wreaths on Remembrance Day dates from 1921, though the sheets of poppies which covered the battlefields of France and Flanders had been remarked on as early as the summer of 1915, the first summer after the war began. An anonymous poem appeared in the pages of Punch for that year which was to be reprinted around the world:

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row…

The old Somerset name for them was ’soldiers’. At the outbreak of World War 1 Britain was still largely and agricultural nation, and poppies in all their frailty, their scattered petals like drops of blood among the harvested corn, must always have been suggestive of spilt blood and sacrifice, the necessity of death for the continuity of life, the duty to remember. For these are not the poppies of oblivion (Papaver somniferum, the source of opium, morphine and heroin), bu Papaver rhoeas, the field poppy, which springs up wherever soil is cultivated or disturbed, each plant producing perhaps a dozen flowers, each flower producing a seed head, each seed head containing thousands of seeds, each seed viable for eighty or a hundred years – waiting for the right conditions to germinate. Like the websites now which enable one to search for the fallen of the two world wars, each site filled with innumerable small facts, each fact inconsiderable in itself, one hardly distinguishable from the next, each biding its time until it is found by the person who seeks it, waiting for the time when it will germinate in the mind, like a poppy seed.

Blowing in the Wind

14 Comments CherryPie on Jul 7th 2009

14 Responses to “Thoughts on Poppies”

  1. jameshigham says:

    Any particular reason you were thinking of these, Cherie?

    • CherryPie says:

      No James it was in the book I was reading today. I liked the analogy, thought it would be good for remembrance day but knew I would have forgotten about it well before then.

      And I am particularly fond of poppies :-)

  2. They are such beautiful flowers, beautiful and so shortlived

  3. ubermouth says:

    I love that poem. That and The Ancient Mariner are my favourites.
    My Mother grows the same poppies as in your picture.I prefer them to the standard poppies.

  4. trubes says:

    Hello Cherie,
    I really enjoyed reading this post, very moving indeed.
    We have wild poppies growing in our garden, so pretty
    and delicate. When our Rabbit Rocket was alive he used to eat them, no wonder he was bonkers.
    It’s amazing how many shrubs have reappeared since he went to the great carrot patch in the sky!
    We’ve had a small crop of strawberries this year and a profusion purple pixies and rock plants. He was such a vandal but very cute.
    This is the first time I’ve been able to access your site for a while, My PC kept denying me access.
    I kept trying and voila… I’ve made it!

    Di.x

    • CherryPie says:

      Your garden sounds wonderful, they are ever changing aren’t they?

      I am glad you made it :-) not sure why there was a problem tho…

  5. I didn’t know they used to be called “soldiers”. Poppies still grow like that here. Beautiful photo.

  6. trubes says:

    Cherie, the fault was from my end, it keeps happening with a few of my other favourites but seems to rectify itself in time.
    I had a fiddle round with the explorer thingy that keeps popping up on my screen and then the problems began!
    I await a visit from my clever IT consultant son-in -law to sort it out for me. (He lives 200 miles away).
    There is so much I need to learn but can’t find anyone nearby to teach me. Maybe there will be some courses starting in the Autumn.

    Di.x

    P.S. I’ve put another post up on my site, more good news!

  7. luisa brehm says:

    wonderful poppies !!!
    thanksssssssssssss for the info ;-) ))))))))))))
    more kissesssssssssssssssssss