The vivid orange California poppy is a cousin of the bright red Flanders poppy but with some quirky differences.
The brilliant orange of the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, makes it a dazzling show piece, whether it’s a single plant with a handful of blooms or a hillside ablaze with flaming petals. The early Spanish explorers were so impressed with the sea of blooms that they referred to California as ‘The Golden West’ and ‘The Land of Fire’. Although they have naturalised in parts of eastern Australia after escaping from gardens in the 1870’s, I’ve only grown them in an old cracked terracotta plant pot the size of a soccer ball that basks languorously in our sunny north facing courtyard, but they never fail to impress.
They’re a hardy bunch. It doesn’t matter what conditions you throw at them, they just keep on flinging their seed into the cracks between the pavers on our veranda or the wind blows them out onto the coarse gravel of our Japanese style front garden, and ‘voile’, green shoots appear. They have clearly evolved to survive very tough conditions. Our house and front garden sit directly on clay, and the pavers in the courtyard and veranda are set in a bed of sand that nestles on the clay, so there’s no soft humus rich soil to provide nutrients for growth.
Although the California poppy is a member of the Papaveraceae family, like the bright red Flanders poppy (Papaver rhoeas) and its cousins that we all love, the California poppy, or ‘California sunlight’ as it is sometimes called, is vastly different in both the shape and size of the mature seed head and the mechanism of releasing the seeds. Unlike the bulbous spherical seed head of the Flanders poppy that is the size of a grape and filled with hundreds of seeds that are shaken out of openings at the top as they tilt in the wind, the California poppy has a long slender gently curved seed head about the length of your middle finger with a single row of tiny dark brown seeds inside. When it’s ripe, it literally explodes and the seeds fly out at great speed so they land as far as possible from the parent plant to ensure a greater chance of survival.
California poppies are quite unique in the way their flowers open. Each bud is covered by two green sepals that are fused in the shape of a tall pointy pixie hat, like the blue-green bud in the painting. As the bloom prepares to open, the pixie hat gradually slides upwards to release four silky smooth bright orange petals from their protective cap which then falls off. Once released, they only last a couple of days. They’re a bit like a sprinter who is a ball of energy and runs ‘full pelt’ until they’re depleted and collapse in a heap of exhaustion. It’s no wonder these vibrant sun-loving flowers close in cloudy weather and at dusk, as if the party’s over when things get a bit dull!
Like it’s cousin the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, the California poppy contains alkaloids in its sap that are sedative and analgesic. Unlike the opium poppy though, there are only low levels of this substance making them a mild and gentle pain reliever and relaxant which, according to current research, is effective but not addictive. The native American Indians were clearly aware of these beneficial properties and used the sap to ease headaches, treat insomnia, and relieve pain, particularly from toothache and wounds.
Year after year we have a visual feast of vivid orange blooms scattered across our front garden, and each year in autumn after they’ve finished flowering, we remove all but the single plant that remains in the terracotta pot at the front door, and then look forward with anticipation and joy to see where new flowers will pop up the next spring.