I have one near the pond edge (about 5 feet) and the occasional berry will drop into the pond. I don't have koi and my goldfish don't eat them. Mostly the birds and squirrels strip the tree of all berries long before they would fall, but like I said I have found the occasional berry. If you are thinking about planting a dogwood over your pond don't do it because aside from the berry issue hanging trees over ponds dump leaves in the pond and then their is the possibility of roots in liners (in you have a liner). If you already have one over the pond and the berries drop in and nobody has died you already have your answer. CT

i'm actually really surprised it wasn't ID'd either, especially when you consider the competency i've experienced with the people i'd asked in the past (although the near-dozen people at Lowes, Home Depot and Ace weren't expected). i think the problem was my inclination to suggest i thought it was some variant of eupatorium. i think if i would have broken a leaf off and smelled it, i would have figured it out on my own - this is what worked for the two anise hyssop that came up on my side yard unexpectedly, and the tomatoes too. why wouldn't one of the MGs do the same, i wonder? either way, i really appreciate the ID. it's beautiful. if it wasn't such a profuse seeder, i'd put it in one of my raised beds with (the profuse seeding anise). maybe i'll do it anyway and try to control by pulling the seed heads. :)

I agree with Kevin :-) In fact, unless you want oriental poppies all over your garden area (and yes, they are very difficult to transplant), I'd just cut off the seed pods, green or brown, and get rid of them. There is such a thing as too many oriental poppies! And are you sure they are oriental poppies? Peony or breadseed poppies (Papaver somniferum) are very common in this area and have now finished flowering and gone to seed. I'd always shake a few of their seed pods around when I pulled out the plants at the end of their season (these are annuals) and that provided more than enough new plants for next season. Typically, these seeds will remain doramnt until early next spring and you can thin or remove as necessary when they appear then and are still small.

Terri, that was a good article. I wish the article had included a picture of the poppies, though. I got some seed marked "Gray-Seeded Poppy" in a bunch of seeds mailed to me as bonus in a seed trade. I have seen posts by people who say it is illegal to grow them so I'm glad to see in the article you provided the link to about "intent". I am one of those gray-haired grandmothers. Here is a picture of the poppies that grew from the seed I was sent: I thought the flowers were quite attractive. The center of the flower reminds me of a little spaceship. When the flower is done, it leaves a pod that looks to me like a little salt shaker on a stem. When the seeds have matured enough, the pod dries and shrinks back from a little scalloped "hat" to reveal holes. If you turn the pod upside down and give it a little shake, the seeds will come out like salt out of a salt shaker. They are, indeed, gray. Like the article said, I would think you could plant poppy seed from your spice rack. In the case of something like marijuana, you can get in trouble for having either the plant or the seed. So since we can buy poppy seed in any store, and I've never heard of anyone raiding somebody's spice rack, I find it a little odd that anybody's raiding someone's flower garden. Again, I suppose it would make a difference if you had an entire FIELD of them, as the article said. --Ilene