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Re: Opium poppies

On Fri, 6 Feb 1998, Gay Klok wrote:

> had seen in a New Zealand garden.  He informed me that all white
> poppies, no matter what the latin name were "opium" poppies, 

This is nonsense; it has nothing to do with color, though there are likely
some stronger cultivars out there.  Pictures I've seen of opium fields in
S.E. asia have a large percentage of whites and pinks.  

> in fact,
> that all poppies had the potential to be used for opium 

Also not really true.  All poppies have some opiates; some have more
complex collections of alkaloids than others, and in differing
concentrations.  P. orientale is sometimes used (regardless of color) in
the commercial trade, and in Greece, an old folk practice was to make a
light brew of P. rhoeas to give to fretful babies.

> and it was nonsense that the Roman soldiers were put to sleep or fell
> down dead by just wandering into the field of poppies and smelling them,
> papaver orientale, I believe. 

This is true, it is nonsense. :)  

> He also suggested if I was importing anything like Meconopsis to warn
> the supplier not to use the word "poppy" in the description or the seed
> packet would be taken away and burnt.  

Boy, this really is getting absurd...and I thought *our* folks were bad!

> I suppose the same for the Californian poppy tree, that's how red tape
> works, but not my nice chap doing the interview. 

It's poppy family but it's not even a Papaver species....this whole
business of trying to make a naturally occurring plant illegal is absurd
to me.  Here in the Pacific Northwest, another organism (not strictly a
plant) is common - "magic mushrooms."  Actually the strongest species in
North America is fairly common in wood mulch here.  A fairly harmless
thing really, but of course the laws are all around it - you can't really
prosecute people for having mushrooms pop up in their mulch.  And you can
posess them fresh; heck, you can eat them fresh if you want to.  But if
you dry them then you have committed a felony.  It's all nuts.

Bob
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