Meanderings of the Mind……Poppies

The other day as I was making lemon poppy seed bread (delicious with homemade lemon curd), I wondered if these were in fact the poppy seeds I could use to grow the brilliantly colored flowers. I did some research via Google.

These tiny black seeds are from the opium poppy. (The species name—papaver somniferum—means sleep inducing.) However the seeds used in my bread are from the ripened flower’s dried seed pod. Opium is derived from the “latex” of the unripe fruit. The seeds were used by many ancient civilizations. For example, the Egyptians used them as sedatives. Others thought the seeds had magical powers of invisibility. (Pondering how that belief came about.) It is said that the seeds help to alleviate asthma, whooping cough and insomnia. Today many countries use them to make a paste for such dishes as puddings, cakes and pastries.

Thinking of poppies brought to mind John McCrae’s World War I poem, “In Flanders Fields.” It’s in the form of a French rondeau: thirteen lines of eight syllables, plus two half line refrains of four syllables, in three stanzas using only three rhymes in a  scheme of AABBA, AAB with the C refrain, AABBA with the C refrain. The refrain is identical with the beginning of the first line of the poem.

http://public.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mccrae.html

John McCrae (1872-1918) was a Canadian physician and became Lieutenant Colonel and commander of the Canadian General Hospital at Boulogne during the war. He wrote the poem after a friend of his was killed in the fighting. He was apparently sitting in a dressing station and looking out at the fields of poppies growing on the graves. Scholars have been arguing whether the poem is pro or anti-war ever since it was published in Punch in December, 1915. (The poem seems to me to be a lament about war and lost lives. The speaker is dead, one of the many buried beneath the poppies.)

In my research I did find how to grow poppies. The seeds like the chill of winter so you need to spread them on prepared soil in the fall and come spring you will have a field of vibrant-colored petals.