Papaver somniferum is an annual. If you undercut this 'bulb' after flowering you will get a milky substance and this contains opium. If you leave it for longer it will develop into a pod with thousands of seeds. You can collect these seeds and use them next year for the next flower display (I agree the flowers are very beautiful) or you can cook it with milk and sugar, mince it and use it to make a delicious poppy strudel ( you will need about 200grams of poppy seeds), very traditional in middle Europe as a Xmas treat. You can buy the cake in Kakulas bro. I think abot $5 a piece. I make it every year but I get poppy seeds from the above shop I do not grow the illegal stuff :-).

In Tasmania they harvest the poppy heads and straw to extract morphine. This is generally done between now and February. The flowers are a light pink colour. I would think yours would have much smaller amounts of alkaloid than the commercially grown varieties. Meggs is right about them being annual. Wait until they completely dry out, cut the capsule off and break it open to release hundreds of seeds which you can plant for next year.

"but I thought these were illegal..."

funny you should mention this, there was a discussion about this very thing on the abc yesterday, and the guest lawyer said that you could be charged with cultivating a narcotic if you got caught growing these, even if you had no intention of making drugs from them, so yep they are illegal.

Hmmm, at the moment it is in my front yard... maybe I should move it under the cover of darkness!!!

Angelee

I, too, was growing tomato pink/red oriental poppies in my garden when someone remarked that he thought they were the real thing!! I checked with the Agriculture Department and delightful young man with a sense of humour said that they had heard of my enterprise and that they were watching!! He asked me to describe my poppies - which were as I said tomato pink/red with a pale lilac at the inner join of the petals. He said that they were not the true opium poppy, which were (from memory) pale pink with a deeper purple inner part to their petals. I asked him to visit me in jail if he was wrong! If you cut off the heads after they dry off you will have thousands of seeds for the following year.

Reminds me of a story my dad told me once.
A chap in his canary club was caught cultivating marijuana in his back yard.He claimed that he was only growing it for the seeds which he was adding to his feed for his canaries.To help them sing better.
I had visions of crested canaries with dreadlocks sing bob marley tunes.
I suppose one opium poppy wouldn't be as bad as a field of them.But then I would jail someone for two ecstacy tablets in their handbag either.

The garden variety of P. somniferum is I believe a low alkaloid form of the plant. Problem is however that the authorities have no easy way of determining which you are growing so all P. somniferum are banned and rightly so from a drug point of view. The seed cannot be imported and in fact all Papaver seed is carefully examined by AQIS.
At one stage local council inspectors were on the prowl and the coppers also tried to ban P. orientale in some areas but the nursery trade jumped up and down and it was recinded.

Look on eBay. There are any number of traders in Australia selling P. somniferum seed. I think Papaver paeoniflorum (which is really Papaver somniferum var. paeoniflorum) is also often sold.

Certainly once you grow them, you never get rid of them which is not a bad thing! They are a lovely flower when en masse.

SSSssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Hi, I was given some opium poppy seeds from a nice lady running a B & B, but I don't know when is the best time to sow them.

They were is such lovely colours that I fell in love with them.
Cheers.

Hey Everyone

i am growing an area of green mulch in my backyard and want to incorporate all sorts of different herbs, grasses, lettuces, flowering plants etc. ive purchased corn poppy seeds but Papaver somniferum makes lovely flowers. Does anyone have any seed they would be willing to send me. Id be happy to pay postage or trade?

Thanks

By the way. if you can buy the seeds off ebay then surely they must be legal?

I don't have any seeds but some years ago I purchased from my favourite rarer plants nursery in Sydney a couple of 'paeony poppies' that put out a lovely pinkish flower. A little research revealed them as papaver somniferom. I didn't think of collecting the seeds and I haven't seen them anywhere since, unfortunately. Guess they took them off the market.

You know, that story about the seeds for caged birds just might be right, as my gardening expert swears that they used to incorporate a range of seeds in bird seed mixes including hemp [ another name for marijhana] Also had you heard that , for a promotion in Adelaide years ago , someone had a big swath of poppy seeds planted for a pagent (I think it was at the racetrack), and the authorities were embassed to discover that the plants that emerged were opium poppies? Is this another one of those urban myths? Incidentally the fluffy poppies are one of those plants that gardeners swap between themselves, I haven't heard of any convictions but that doesn't mean that it isn't possible!!