re: shirley poppy

	Common names can sometimes be confusing (there must be 300
plants that are called "bluebells" somewhere in the world...).  Let's
see if I can help a little with this poppy question.
	A "shirley poppy" is not the same plant as an "oriental poppy."
The shirley is Papaver rhoeas, an annual poppy (in temperature zones).
They are usually grown by sowing seeds directly onto the ground in the
site where you want them, either in late fall or early spring.
	The orientals are Papaver orientalis and they are perennials in
most zones.  They are usually grown by sowing seeds indoors in winter
or, more commonly, by buying plants in pots in summer or digging up
divisions from friends and planting in the fall.
	Although the orientals do have fuzzy, floppy foliage, I still
like to have a few and so I put other perennials fairly close in to hide
the poppy's summer foliage.  I agree that they could get to be too much
massed (and they do spread when they're happy!), but I still gasp from
the beauty when I go past a big mass of them in bloom at just the right
time.  Sometime I'd like to try the dwarfer oriental hybrid, 'Allegro' I
think it's called.  This year I'll get (hopefully) to see the first
blooms on a new pink one 'Helen Elizabeth.'
	The shirleys are so ephemeral and silky and dainty dancing in
the breeze that I love them too.  They are good for filling in between
perennials where you're not sure if you want anything permanent that
might crowd too much.  For example, I have been growing some of my roses
in one bed that (so far) has no other plants in it (I have other roses,
of course, especially English roses, in with all sorts of perennials
elsewhere in the yard).  This spring I'm going to sprinkle the leaf mold
mulch that's thick on the roses with a couple of packets of shirleys
(Mother of Pearl, the singles, and Angel Choir, the doubles).
	Another nice poppy you can sprinkle out and that reseeds itself
in a sunny, well-drained situation is the California poppy (Escholtzia).
I have raised scree beds in sun for rock garden and alpine plants (to
keep them sort of drier during the Illinois muggies in August and the
wet winters), and a sprinkling of these cute little poppies (I got a
dwarf cultivar) gave me yellow and orange patches all summer long and
attractive grey-green dissect foliage.
	There are wonderful Iceland poppies that people in cooler places
(like my sister in Oregon) can grow easily and enjoy.  Of course, if you
are in England or the Pacific Northwest or the Himalyas, the Meconopsis,
the famed blue poppy, is the most gorgeous of all poppies to behold.
There are desert poppies too, Argemone, that are very tall and white.
The Stylophorum diphylla, the yellow wood poppy, is great in shade and
will reseed well in light soil beside ferns, hostas, bleeding heart, and
the like.
	I was out at Borders the other night and leafed through a
wonderful hardbound book by Christopher Grey-Wilson (renowned British
plantsman) entitled "Poppies" and devoted to the whole Papaveraceae
family; there was a big chunk of glossy color photos in the
center--beautiful!

Hope this helps.


Susan Campanini
in east central Illinois
zone 5b, min temp -15F×
e-mail:  campanin@uiuc.edu
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