Hard to be specific with that info, but some critical factor must have occurred -- too little/much water at key times, seeds buried in mulch or weeds, seed rotted or was munched by critters, fertilizer burn on seedlings, Round-up, ...? You'd need to investigate back to last year's blooms and think about what changed and if it was a big enough impact to take down a fairly reliable annual. I was in southern OR recently and the stands of giant orange poppies were everywhere. Gorgeous, I can imagine you miss yours.

and thge Prince of Orange is an ORIENTAL poppy, completely different flower and leaves. This one has much different leaves and flower form... Yes, Prince of Orange is an Oriental poppy; its' the Oriental poppies that are true perennials, as a class of poppy. And the Prince of Orange is a double orange, just as the picture you showed. I'm not saying yours IS Prince of Orange, I used the owrds "similar to" above, but I used that as an example to point out the difference between a double and a single petalled flower that was orange. The Papaver somniferums can be slightly perennial and have very different light colored foliage with large leaves, but the regular old heirloom orange ones are typical Oriental types with typical dark green jagged foliage as opposed to somniferums which have light colored much larger leaves, often referred to as lettuce leaves. Is yours a P. somniferum with that lighter colored foliage with larger leaves which are very different from the typical Oriental poppy foliage? Carolyn

Wow, those red ones are very pretty! I got some 'Mikado' in a seed trade, however the seeds did not sprout. Perhaps they are not a very vigorous cultivar. I think I'm going to buy some and give it another try. I have 'Purple gleam' and 'Linen white' (which is more cream colored) in the front garden and they reseed prolifically every year. Never have to sow those. They look nice along the edge of the driveway. In this climate, they are annual and have a nice flush of blooms in late Spring/early summer, then die back a bit in the heat and bloom less. I usually shear them to tidy them up, and they perk up in the fall. I have no idea what their growth pattern is in California, where they are native. This is 'Linen white' -

Well, I will add a new mystery to the post. One of the few perennial plants that survived the 'lean years' before I bought this place was a huge clump of white summer phlox. Don't know the variety, but these plants got over six feet tall and bloomed solid white. This spring, because of all the construction, I moved them from a southern exposure that was relatively damp and that received shade from mid-afternoon on, to a spot with full southern exposure and that was hotter and drier. This year they were three to four feet tall and bloomed.....PINK. I can understand the lower height, since they received more sun, but the color change???? I was going to post this separately earlier in the summer, but didn't because everyone would think I was crazy. Which I am, but there's no need to belabor the point. narcnh