The Poppy

The Poppy is known as a symbol of remembrance to those who lost their lives fighting in WW1, and also for its medicinal properties. A Herbaceous perennial plant comes in numerous variations and colours. The flowers bloom for a short time in late Spring and early Summer for about four weeks. A beautiful delicate flower which is well worth planting in your garden.

In the late 1800s A German pharmacist Fredrick Serturner isolated the opium properties from the Poppy.

Opium, a very strong painkiller was named by Fredrick; he called it morphine after Morpheus the Greek God of Dreams and the remarkable medical properties of this flower remain unmatched to this day.

Also known as Corn Poppy, Field Poppy, Red Poppy and Red Weed become used as a symbol of remembrance after WW1. A Canadian soldier wrote a poem (Flanders Field) bringing to light the amazing sight of thousands upon thousands of Poppies filling a battlefield.

A field where in 1914 a battle was fought, bombs, soldiers walking on the soil fighting from trenches. The blood spilled with thousands of soldiers losing their lives as they fought in this field, a devastating representation of the war.

In the wake of the battle Poppies grew from the turned over ground and thousands upon thousands of Poppies filled the field.

The Poppy seed can lay dormant in the ground for hundreds of years and the battle that took place there resulted in the disturbing of the ground causing the Poppy seed to germinate and grow.

Filling the field creating what some referred to as (The Red Sea). The sale of the artificial poppy began in 1918 in remembrance of those who fought and those who lost their lives in the war. The money raised was for the service men, their wife's and their children, the widows and orphans helping the lives devastated with the aftermath the war had left in its wake.

The sale of the artificial Remembrance Poppy is international.