Opium Poppy Berries & Cream Seeds - Papaver somniferum

This mix of Opium Poppies or Papaver somniferum Berries & Cream, offer a tasty selection of annual poppies bearing large double flowers, combining and mixing shades of red, pink, white in a whirling dance of colours. They are borne by sturdy stems emerging from a very ornamental, silvery-green foliage. This variety is very easy to sow directly outside and prospers in the sun, in light and well-worked soil.

The annual poppy 'Berries & Cream' is a recent and original horticultural variety, belonging to the Papaveraceae or poppy family. It is derived from Papaver somniferum var. nigrum, which is found in the mountains of Asia, but also in Europe, on limestone soils where poppies usually grow. This plant, which probably originated in the regions between the Mediterranean and Anatolia, has given rise to a multitude of varieties that have long been cultivated for ornamental purposes. 'Berries & Cream' has a beautiful, undulating, silver-green foliage with beautifully lobed, elliptical leaves with scalloped margins. From its 30 to 45 cm wide clump of foliage, tall stems emerge from June to August, holding sumptuous solitary flowers 80 cm above the ground. They are very double but widely opened and made of slightly ruffled petals. Each flower being different, the petals are either solid white, pink, red, or variegated with streaks of red berry hues. Summer blooms give way to a characteristic fruit filled with small very ornamental black seeds which take on a slate blue sheen as it dries and that varies with the light, because of the film of crystallized wax that protects its surface. Opium poppies have a taproot that is not very resistant to transplanting, so it is best to sow them in place.

At ease in sophisticated gardens, in medieval-type gardens and gardens without gardeners, Opium poppies make it possible to quickly and effortlessly create oceans of infinitely delicate flowers that seem to dance on the silvery foam of their foliage, creating a stirring spectacle of bright, dark or pastel colours. Although they are not very long-lasting in bouquets, 'Berries & Cream' Poppy flowers are extremely charming when planted in large groups, in front of large daisies or the moving leaves of grasses, or even in pots on the patio. This annual plant, like the cosmos, has no equivalent for occupying the open sunny spaces between annuals or large perennials such as sunflowers, whose flowers take over later in the season.

Once the flowering period is over, the fruit remains, a precious asset for dry bouquets, but also the poppy straw which is often perceived as a majestic element of the garden or a somewhat enigmatic remnant of summer.