said "

POPPY.

Papaver Orientale.

F this garish plant it may be once seen, known for ever." The name suggests an Indian plant, but Armenia and the Caucasus are its head-quarters, and therefore there is no problem presented in the fact that it is perfectly hardy in the English garden. As regards its one distinguishing character it stands alone. There is no plant that can compete with it for the size and fiery splendour of its flowers, which, indeed, spoil everything of a quiet and refined nature that happens to be in the vicinity, when it is holding forth its burning cressets like signals of alarm.

It is very careless of conditions, being a thrifty plant on a cold clay soil, though more thrifty and more splendid on a dry gravel, or on a sunny rockery affording a good depth of free gritty loam.

The perennial poppies are scarcely entitled to be regarded as first-class garden plants. They are in some

degree coarse, and their beauty and bravery soon pass away, and they offer but little of character to interest during the many months when they are not in flower. In this respect they resemble the herbaceous pæonies, although it must be admitted that of the two the latter are the more worthy of regard both for distinctive leafage as well as splendid flowers. But the brevity of their display is of great importance, for they occupy much room, and afford special gratification for so short a space of time that we may liken them to fireworks, that dazzle us for a moment and then make us painfully sensible of the negation of darkness. In a small garden such plants are rather in the way than welcome. But in the woodland, and in the garden that has many large features, they are noble adornments in their season of flowering, and are unobtrusive at other times. And they are particularly valuable in gardens that partake somewhat of a public nature, where there is an ample space of grass turf, mixed shrubberies, and extensive borders that obtain attention only occasionally. Here these large subjects come in usefully, and if there are perennial poppies, pæonies, phloxes, and early flowering chrysanthemums in plenty, there will be much bloom at little cost, because such plants can take good care of themselves for many years if properly planted in the first instance.

The section of poppies of which our present plant is a representative may afford to the amateur gardener a pretty lesson in plant propagation. The seeds ripen pretty freely, and may be most easily grown into serviceable plants. Moreover, the plants themselves may be divided, and every rooted tuft planted out in moist, mild weather will soon become established, and do its duty. But there is yet a third mode of multiplication, rarely practised, but

applicable to innumerable subjects, from the gigantic paulonia to this flaring poppy. It will be observed that this gay weedy thing has a white fleshy root, remotely resembling that of a parsnip. This may be cut into pieces an inch in length, and the pieces may be planted in pans filled with sandy loam, the tops of the cuttings being just even with the surface; and if kept reasonably moist, and close shut up in a frame, every separate piece of root will in due time make a plant. One of the requirements of the management is patience, which, indeed, is the main requirement in propagating plants by any and every method everywhere.

There are several forms of the Oriental poppy, and they are distinguished from other poppies not only by the intense though unrefined colour of their flowers, but by the fact that they have three calyx pieces, other species having but two. Papaver Orientale is regarded as the type. It has flowers unaccompanied by bracts. Papaver bracteatum is a bracted variety, commonly regarded as a separate species. Papaver concolor and Papaver maculatum, which have a place in the books, do not properly exist at all. The names originate from the fact that in some cases the flowers are self-coloured deep scarlet, and in others there is a purple spot at the base of each petal. For all ordinary purposes these trivial variations are of no consequence at all.

Tourists in Wales and Cumberland, and other of the mountainous districts of the north-west, are often perplexed by the appearance amongst rocks, and at the foot of old walls on dusty roadsides, of an interesting herb bearing gay yellow flowers. Its likeness to a poppy begets an interest, and its intrinsic beauty sustains that interest,

more especially when it is found fringing the roadway by the side of the former residences of Wordsworth and Coleridge and other of our poets amid the hills. When the neophyte inquires for the name of this plant, he is often told it is the celandine, from which it differs in the most decided manner. This, indeed, is the Welsh poppy (Meconopsis Cambrica), one of the most beautiful and engaging of British weeds, and especially worthy of note, from its persistency in creeping close to the walls that have sheltered many of the brightest wits and happiest versifiers whose names glitter in our great Walhalla.