GARDENING - Oriental poppies

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In focus: oriental poppy - (Filed: 26/05/2001)

Ursula Buchan on the flower with the droopy past that is now in fashion

THE fortunes of plants soar and plunge in a way that would make a yo-yo dizzy. Take Oriental poppies. Ten years ago, they were scarcely to be found outside old cottage gardens, or those belonging to the horticulturally adventurous.

Red hot: orientale's bold colours are back in vogue

Gardeners were underwhelmed by their exuberant but short-lived flowers, the way they lay face-down in the mud after rain, and the tendency for the stems to swan-neck if they were not staked.

Their big, blowsy, come-hither flowers, with petals like coloured wrinkled tissue paper, seemed larger than life and out of proportion with the modern "small garden", full of well-behaved perennials and neat, dwarf conifers.

In the past few years, however, thanks partly to the runaway success of the purple-flowered 'Patty's Plum', prominently exhibited at a succession of Chelsea Flower Shows, together with the increasing emphasis by gardening pundits on bold colour, the massed ranks of Papaver orientale cultivars have been catapulted right back into vogue at the expense of pastel shades. And about time, too.

I have never been able to resist the appeal of those 6in-diameter cup flowers, which break free with an almost audible "pop" from their hairy, egg-shaped buds in late May.

These flowers often have black blotches in the centre and a fat boss of black anthers that contrast starkly with the colour of the petals, which these days can be anything from pure white to purple, via pink, scarlet, crimson, orange and picotee.

Like colour photographs, they come in either a gloss or matt finish. They are indispensable for early summer planting schemes and, by diligent dead-heading as each flower fades and mulching so that the soil does not dry out in summer, they can be persuaded to send up a succession of later flowers.

It seems to me a virtue of the large, deeply cut, hairy leaves that they begin to die back quite soon after flowering, because, by late summer, other perennials such as asters and echinaceas will be pressing for space. Moreover, if you cut the leaves back hard as they yellow, the plant will send up fresh ones in late summer.

The Oriental poppy's increasing popularity can be laid partly at the door of Sandy Worth, of Water Meadow Nursery, in Cheriton, Hampshire, who holds the National Collection.

After the international trials at Wisley finished in 1998, she got in touch with nurseries where the best cultivars had come from, with a view to acquiring cuttings material.

This led her to Germany, to Countess von Zeppelin's nursery at Sulzburg, where many fine modern cultivars have been raised. No less than six of the eight that won Awards of Garden Merit at the trials were hers, notably 'Khedive' (pale pink), 'Effendi' (big salmon-pink flowers), and 'Leuchtfeuer' (glowing salmon-orange, with a big black basal blotch).

These, together with other modern cultivars with strong stems and upward, rather than outward, facing flowers, such as Sandy's own 'Lauren's Lilac', 'Snowgoose', 'Raspberry Ruffles' and 'The Promise' have been introduced into the Water Meadow Nursery catalogue, along with a race of hybrids bred in California, called Super Poppies.

Super Poppies are complex hybrids between orientale, the closely related bracteatum, rupifragum and annual species such as californicum and somniferum.

Although tall, these tend to be stiff-stemmed, so do not require staking. And the Super Poppies have hybrid vigour, which means they strike quickly from root cuttings, and produce flowers all summer into the autumn.

Sandy particularly recommends 'Alpha Centauri', which has deep red-pink flowers, 'Viva', a luminous dark pink-red, and the in-vogue plummy-purple 'Medallion'.

Growing tips

Do not plant in waterlogged soil. Mulch lighter soils with bark chippings to help retain moisture in summer.

Keep cultivars such as 'Patty's Plum' and 'Lauren's Lilac', which have bloomy-purple flowers, out of hot sun.

Poppies are greedy feeders, so try mixing Vitax Q4 as well as manure into the planting hole.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2001


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