Top of the Pops

In June this year, the moat around the Tower of London will be awash with waves of colourful flowers in a ‘superbloom’ to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Excitingly it’s real flowers this time, but few will forget the poignant sight in 2014 when Historic Royal Palaces marked the centenary of the outbreak of World War I with an installation of hundreds of thousands of blood-red ceramic poppies.

Fragile and ephemeral, poppies have such potent symbolism, not to mention potent effects: opium poppies are still the only source of the painkillers morphine and codeine. But aside from being an emblem of remembrance and an economically important crop, poppies are one of the most