Monday, May 16, 2011

poppies

I just finished reading The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. It demonstrates how plants have used humans to help (or hinder) their evolution through time. It talks about the lavish tulip festivals that the Ottomans used to have, where turtles would walk about the gardens with candles on their backs, and the fields of tulips looked like they went on forever because they put mirrors in the gardens. Since reading it I catch David saying things like "it was a four-petal tulip and it had broken with a red stripe".

These of course are not tulips, they are poppies. But I have been looking at flowers differently lately, even if they weren't a variety discussed in the book. These poppies were incredible. They were so tight when I bought them and I waited so patiently for them all to open. Then they all burst open in a matter of days and then they were gone. They left trails of papery petals throughout my house.









I saved some seeds for next year.

3 comments:

  1. Truly stunning poppies, I don't think I have ever seen that variety before. I didn't read the book to accompany the Botany of Desire, but the documentary definitely left an impression. Similar to that, I am reading a book called "50 Plants that Changed the Course of History" right now and I think you would enjoy it if you enjoyed the B of D.
    -M

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  2. Shoooot... They don't make 'em like that over here! At least not for sale. I'd gobble those suckers up.

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  3. what variety are they? They look an awful lot like scabiosa, don't they?

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