California Poppies

 

We must be very clear at the outset that we are not speaking here of the Papaveraceae somniferum, the very, very bad opium poppy. It is illegal to grow opium poppies in the United States, and unnecessary. If you want to make someone drowsy and tingly, hit them with a hammer. Or a rake. A good gardener makes use of the tools at hand.

No, we're talking about Papaveraceae Eschscholzia californica, the California poppy, our state flower and the glory of our spring hillsides. One of the glories, actually, because mustard is pretty much a glory, too, and wild iris, and Indian paintbrush.

Among the glories, then, of our hillsides: the California poppy. 1992 was the year of the California Poppy, according to the people in charge of making Years of Things.

That must be true; you read it on the web.

The California poppy was discovered by David Douglas, a member of an expedition mounted in 1828 by the Royal Horticultural Society. Presumably, any number of Pomo Indians discovered it before that, but they didn't know it was a poppy.

"Is it the kind you smoke?" they asked each other, and quickly lost interest. The Pomo Indians had a lot on their minds, trying to stay out of the way of Father Serra long enough to get some sleep.

Fun fact: The Douglas fir is named for David Douglas, discoverer of the California poppy.

You can grow California poppies, almost. The wildflowers are not suitable for cultivation, because they're wild. You can grow the traditional California Poppy, 'Aurantiaca Orange,' however, which is pretty close to the real thing and is, of course, orange. But you could also choose 'Mission Bells,' a mixture of colors from yellows, oranges and reds with gray-green foliage, or 'Ballerina Mix,' which comes in rose, scarlet, carmine, crimson, yellows and orange.

And you can grow them from seed-- heck, you can just hurl the seeds onto the ground. Poppies are easy: that's one reason it's not the Year of the Datura, things would move a lot more slowly.

You buy your poppy seeds, you till your earth, you add a little peat moss or something to lighten the soil.

Then you broadcast the seeds, just like the guy on the title page of all the Random House books. Just throw 'em in there and maybe throw a little dirt on top. This is not rocket science.

Once the seeds are in the ground, they're like, you know, plants. They need a fair amount of water at first, but then not so much. Infrequent deep watering is better than more frequent shallow watering. Yadada. Basically, you'd have to take a blowtorch to these babies to discourage them from sprouting.

Poppies are rather finicky about being transplanted, And remember, it's not legal to dig up California poppies in the wild. Go to a nursery for your supply.

When should you do it? When the rains come at the end of the year. Down at any decent plant store there will be poppy seeds; race right down and buy a few hundred. They're little tiny things; they look like flea excrement.

In a few months, if you are lucky, you'll have a bright orange sea of waving poppies, much like the meadow that Dorothy fell asleep in when the Wicked Witch of the West tried to kidnap her, only those poppies were too tall to be California poppies, which rarely exceed a foot in height.

Anyway, you'll have these poppies. Isn't that enough? They're legal, they're safe, they're orange.