The Yellow Poppy
23 June 2021 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI finally managed to get a yellow poppy to bloom -- by accident! I have no idea how a poppy managed to germinate successfully in the moss covering the pot in which the long-established miniature rose was growing, when all my other attempts utterly failed to germinate anything at all; I certainly didn't sow it there. I can only assume that a single seed must have been carried into that pot by the wind during my initial attempts back in March, and had been growing there quietly ever since.
I didn't even recognise it as a poppy until a week or so ago; its leaves are wide and three-lobed. (Here's a lovely article on all the different types of poppies, showing the leaves of the Cumbrian/Cambrian -- mine actually came from Cumbria! -- poppy: The yellow poppy of Wales.)
I also have a vibrant display of mesembryanthemums, after all my struggles with them.
They are still doing their best to uproot themselves on a regular basis, as the small thread-like root is apparently incapable of supporting the large fleshy stems and leaves, never mind the flower stalk; as soon as they are exposed to strong sun or heavy rain they fall over and do their best to yank themselves out of the pot altogether. I risked attempting to re-pot the pink ones this evening, putting them into a shallower, wider container (an ex-cherry punnet rather than an ex-double cream pot!) so that they would at least have some surrounding soil on which to rest when they collapsed, rather than being suspended perilously over empty space. The 'sole survivor' of the entire potful that got eaten by slugs, the pot that I spent six weeks or so nursing in and out of doors, has now grown rather larger than any of them and is winding its way round fairly happily inside its larger pot after multiple collapses, being supported by the sides where the compost level is rather low. Having germinated long after the 'outdoor' seedlings it has yet to throw up a flower stalk, which may have something to do with its happily horizontal habit! And the other tiny one has, after all, still survived, though it is still very small compared to the rest.
I have been keeping my eye on a display of bright orange flowers which have been self-seeding out of a front garden on my way home from Sunday market and growing in the verge, and where the blooms are now running to seed. I managed to collect some seed-heads -- out of the garden wall, I'm afraid, rather than out of the verge, where they are still green and rather smothered with grass -- and to identify the very distinctive seeds as calendula.
I've planted a few in the six-pack which has failed yet again to germinate any of the yellow poppy seed that I planted there, just to check for viability. (And if the yellow poppy seed does come up, at least I now know how to recognise the leaves!)
After reading that poppy article I realised that the tulip-like plants with very distinctive long seed-pods growing in the same border are in fact California poppies -- perhaps I should try to grab some of those seeds as well later! (I don't have a lot of scruples about taking seed-heads out of people's gardens, because most people are so busy dead-heading that they clearly don't want them -- and most plants are so prolific that a few seed-heads more or less isn't going to damage the chances of self-seeding in the border for next year. Actual blooms are different...)
I didn't even recognise it as a poppy until a week or so ago; its leaves are wide and three-lobed. (Here's a lovely article on all the different types of poppies, showing the leaves of the Cumbrian/Cambrian -- mine actually came from Cumbria! -- poppy: The yellow poppy of Wales.)
I also have a vibrant display of mesembryanthemums, after all my struggles with them.
They are still doing their best to uproot themselves on a regular basis, as the small thread-like root is apparently incapable of supporting the large fleshy stems and leaves, never mind the flower stalk; as soon as they are exposed to strong sun or heavy rain they fall over and do their best to yank themselves out of the pot altogether. I risked attempting to re-pot the pink ones this evening, putting them into a shallower, wider container (an ex-cherry punnet rather than an ex-double cream pot!) so that they would at least have some surrounding soil on which to rest when they collapsed, rather than being suspended perilously over empty space. The 'sole survivor' of the entire potful that got eaten by slugs, the pot that I spent six weeks or so nursing in and out of doors, has now grown rather larger than any of them and is winding its way round fairly happily inside its larger pot after multiple collapses, being supported by the sides where the compost level is rather low. Having germinated long after the 'outdoor' seedlings it has yet to throw up a flower stalk, which may have something to do with its happily horizontal habit! And the other tiny one has, after all, still survived, though it is still very small compared to the rest.
I have been keeping my eye on a display of bright orange flowers which have been self-seeding out of a front garden on my way home from Sunday market and growing in the verge, and where the blooms are now running to seed. I managed to collect some seed-heads -- out of the garden wall, I'm afraid, rather than out of the verge, where they are still green and rather smothered with grass -- and to identify the very distinctive seeds as calendula.
I've planted a few in the six-pack which has failed yet again to germinate any of the yellow poppy seed that I planted there, just to check for viability. (And if the yellow poppy seed does come up, at least I now know how to recognise the leaves!)
After reading that poppy article I realised that the tulip-like plants with very distinctive long seed-pods growing in the same border are in fact California poppies -- perhaps I should try to grab some of those seeds as well later! (I don't have a lot of scruples about taking seed-heads out of people's gardens, because most people are so busy dead-heading that they clearly don't want them -- and most plants are so prolific that a few seed-heads more or less isn't going to damage the chances of self-seeding in the border for next year. Actual blooms are different...)
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Date: 2021-06-24 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-24 06:53 pm (UTC)The rose really is pretty miniature, and it's considerably lower than the poppy! (And the magazine tomatoes growing in the background, which have put on a vast amount of growth in the last week).
This is the second crop of rose blossoms, so it is newly opened from a bud and still looking picturesque. The spring flowers have already gone blowsy and dropped.