POPPY. Papaver. Natural Order Rhoadea. Papaveraccæ, Juss. And Poppies, which bind fast escaping sleep. From the Poppy I have ta'en COLUMELLA. A Mortal's balm, and mortal's bane! Juice, that creeping through the heart, Doom'd to heal, or doom'd to kill, Fraught with good, or fraught with ill. MARY ROBINSON. HAVING already published a history of this somniferous plant at considerable length in the History of Cultivated Vegetables, we have now only to notice those different species and varieties which are employed to embellish the parterre of Flora; first observing, that as these plants are made to ease the pains and to procure sleep to the restless invalid, the Poppy in floral language is made the syınbol of consolation. To show that Poppies were cultivated to ornament the royal gardens of Rome in the early days of that city, we have only to call the attention of our readers to the interview which took place between Tarquin the Proud and the messenger who was sent by his son from the city of Gabii. The Carnation Poppy, which adds so considerably to the gaiety of the garden during the months of July and August, and which is so much cultivated in France, and so greatly neglected in England, is a variety of the common Poppy of our cornfields, Papaver Rheas. In its double state it is a flower of great beauty, both on account of its crumpled and delicate texture, elegance of shape, and variety in colouring, some being perfectly white, others plain rose, blush, scarlet, or crimson, and on others the pencil of nature seems to have blended the dyes in the most finished style of colouring, with petals thin as gossamer and double as the rose. This flower bursts out of its confinement at maturity with considerable force, throwing off the two-leaved caducous calyx to some distance, and astonishing the beholder who sees so large and so beautiful a corolla escape from so small a dwelling. The petals are frequently white, with a delicate edging of scarlet or rose-colour, or red petals with white edges, so variously diversified that two plants are seldom alike in their flowers. With what delight and amazement do we frequently regard the ingenuity of the mechanic when he displays the movements of a watch, or a musical box encompassed in a case of diminutive size; but the most complete and costly of these baubles are as inferior to the works which nature has employed on the Poppy, as the clumsiest wheel of a country wheelwright is to the finished mechanism of the most celebrated watch-maker. The calyx of the Poppy not only shuts in the numerous and large petals of the flower with its innumerable chives bearing their anthers on points as fine as hairs, each anther containing an incalculable number of fertilizing particles, but it also contains the capsule, which in itself cannot be examined without exciting our utmost admiration of the wisdom with which it has been formed by the Universal Creator. The capsule is covered by a shield-formed stigma thickly perforated, so as to admit the fecundating particles of the farina to the channels which are so disposed around the eleven cells or chambers of the capsule, that each seed receives its regular portion of this matter by means of an umbilical cord, notwithstanding that there are frequently six thousand of these vegetable eggs contained in one capsule. When we reflect that each of these small seeds is so admirably perfect in its minute dimensions as to contain all the essentials necessary to form a plant on the following year, which is destined to produce at least twenty capsules, we must exclaim with Pope, How wondrous are thy ways! How far above our knowledge and our praise! We were so much attracted by the beauty of the Carnation Poppy in the gardens of the Tuilleries, at Paris, during the summer of 1813, that we procured some of the seed and brought it to England, which on sowing in the following spring produced the gay variety of double flowers that had so much pleased us in the royal gardens of France. From these plants we obtained a good supply of seed; but perceiving abundance of young plants springing up from the self-sown seed, we omitted to sow seeds, excepting in a small spot at a distant part of the garden, which again produced the same beautiful double flowers, whilst all the plants from the self-sown seed blossomed with single flowers, except a few plants with semi-double, but the beautiful edging and varieties in colour were the same. These plants were again permitted to scatter their seed, and the plants were on the succeeding summer so far returned to their natural state as not to be distinguishable from the common Red Poppy of the corn-fields, from which it may be inferred that some kinds of seeds being kept out of the earth beyond the time allotted by nature, become weakened so as to lose a part of their natural properties, and thus produce flowers which the botanist rejects as monsters, from their being out of nature, whilst the florist exults over the change which his art has assisted to produce. We have before noticed that to secure the Balsam in a double state, the seed should be kept for some years before it is sown. The common Corn Poppy, where it abounds, denotes a light and shallow soil, and it is singular that when such land is broken or ploughed up in the spring, when there can be no Poppies to scatter their seed, and although it be where none have ever been seen, yet it is a great chance that such land shall not be covered with these plants during the summer. We have frequently observed this phenomenon on the South Downs of Sussex, when lands have been first broken up ; and even in situations distant from other corn-lands, we have seen the plains glow with the red petals of the Wild Poppy. The ancients thought the Rhaas, Corn-Rose, so necessary for the prosperity of their corn, that the seeds of this Poppy were offered up in the sacred rites of Ceres, whose garland was formed with barley or bearded wheat interwoven with Poppies. An antique statue of this goddess, at the Louvre, at Paris, (No. 235,) represents Ceres as holding Poppies in her hand mixed with corn, as well as having them braided in her hair. And in the same collection, (No. 593,) Sabina holds a cornucopia filled with Pomegranates, Grapes, and Poppy |