Poppies for pain and pleasure
If any plant can be called enigmatic it must be the opium poppy, for it has been both a blessing and curse to mankind. Native to a region that ranges from Turkey east to Afghanistan, India, Myanmar and Thailand, for centuries the disarmingly pretty plant decorated gardens of the wealthy and was used as part of floral decorations.
Papaver somniferum (‘Papaver’ the poppy genus; ‘somniferum’ after Somnus, the Roman god of sleep) grows quickly up to a height of one metre. As a blessing it is the source of the painkiller morphine; as a curse, one of its derivatives, heroin, has had catastrophic effects on mankind worldwide. The poppy also has the unenviable reputation (correct me if I’m wrong) of being the only plant to cause a war.
Said to have been exploited by mankind for at least 6,000 years, the earliest reference to the plant being cultivated is in 3,400BC in south-west, the ‘joy plant’. With such a reputation it isn’t surprising that people began to cultivate it to increase availability and reduce the cost, and it soon found its way along the Silk Road, west to the Mediterranean and east to China.
