Papaver somniferum L., Opium Poppy

Account Summary

Growth form and preferred habitat

This is the only poppy, other than the Welsh Poppy (Meconopsis cambrica), which is in any way frequent in Fermanagh. It is a distinctive, tall, blue-green, fleshy summer annual of lowland, ruderal habits, most typical of roadsides, waste ground and rubbish tips, but occasional also in disturbed soil in gardens. In the latter case, it may have been accidently imported with container plants purchased from garden centres. It flowers in July and August, but even when not bearing its large white, lilac or red terminal flowers, often with a basal purple blotch on each petal, this poppy is very easily identifiable. The only plant it might possibly be confused with is Glaucium flavum (Yellow Horned Poppy) but since it is a strictly maritime plant (certainly with no inland stations in Ireland (Preston et al. 2002)), and Fermanagh has no coastline, we do not meet with any such problem.

Like the other 'cornfield' red poppies, P. somniferum is principally found in light, dry to moist but typically well-drained soils, always in disturbed habitats. In Britain and Ireland, it is always a weed of cultivation, a garden escape or discard (sometimes double-petalled), or a bird-seed introduction (Clement & Foster 1994; Cat Alien Pl Ir).

There are two forms of opium poppy, often but not always given subspecies rank as subsp. somniferum and subsp. setigerum (DC.) Arcang. The former is the common, usual form, while subsp. setigerum, which is more conspicuously bristly on its stems, leaves and sepals, is a rare casual only in Britain and Ireland (Stace 1997).

Fermanagh occurrence

In Fermanagh, P. somniferum has been recorded in a total of 28 tetrads, 5.3% of those in the VC. Twenty-three Fermanagh tetrads contain post-1975 records. It is confined to the lowlands of the county and is found especially in and around the Enniskillen and Maguiresbridge 'conurbations', although both are hardly large enough to be called such. Previously, when Fermanagh still had railway transport connections, it grew along lines and in stations, but now Opium Poppy is only found as a weedy escape along roadsides, in or near gardens and on disturbed or waste ground.

Irish occurrence

While P. somniferum has been recorded at least once in 30 of the 40 Irish VCs (Cen Cat Fl Ir 2; Cat Alien Pl Ir), the New Atlas hectad map shows it is much more frequently recorded in N Ireland than further south. Apart from a concentration around Co Dublin (H21), it appears very thinly scattered across the Republic of Ireland (New Atlas). I regard this Irish distribution pattern purely as a reflection of recorder hours in the field. The restricted distribution in northern Britain and to lower ground everywhere is undoubtedly due to the susceptibility of young plants to late season frost.

British occurrence

The New Altas distribution shows P. somniferum as a frequent and widespread casual in lowland areas of Great Britain, mainly occurring S of a line between Anglesey and Hull, and becoming more confined

to coastal habitats further north. The restricted distribution in the north of these isles, and to lower ground everywhere, is undoubtedly due to young plants being susceptible to late season frost.

Flowering

The flowers are self-compatible and pollination probably takes place in the bud. Again like other widespread poppies, P. somniferum is phenotypically very plastic and it has a high seed output (a mean of between 6,000 and 7,000 seeds/capsule). The seed is long-persistent in the soil seed bank (Salisbury 1964; Jonsell et al. 2001).

History of cultivation and uses

P. somniferum has been in cultivation for medicinal, culinary and decorative purposes since ancient prehistory, and images have been preserved from the civilisation of ancient Sumeria (4000 BC) depicting the poppy along side other images indicating euphoria. Sumerian knowledge of the plant was passed via the Assyrians and Babylonians to the Egyptians, who around 1300 BC began cultivating P. somniferum var. album, referred to as the 'Opium Thebaicum', 'The White Lotus'. The Late Bronze Age Mediterranean trade routes of the Phoenicians and Minoans moved this profitable item from Egypt to Greece, Carthage and Europe. Figurines of Late Minoan and Mycenaean goddesses dating from about 1350 BC, show them wearing poppy decorated crowns (Hood 1978, p. 109; Baumann 1993, p. 69).

Writing sometime between c 460-377 BC, Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine, dismissed the magical attributes of opium. However, he acknowledged its usefulness as a narcotic and a styptic in treating internal diseases, the ailments of women and epidemics. By 300 BC, however, opium was being widely used by Arabs, Greeks and Romans, both as a sedative and as a soporific.

For many years, the Christian church and the associated state authorities banned opium, probably in part because of its 'devilish' eastern origins and, rather surprisingly, it fell into disuse. In 1527 AD, during the height of the European Reformation, opium was reintroduced into medical literature by the Swiss alchemist and physician Paracelsus (1493-1541). He very cleverly renamed the drug 'Laudanum' (Tincture of Opium in alcohol), and thus circumvented church and state disapproval. The black pills or 'Stones of Immortality' Paracelsus prescribed were a compound of opium, citrus juice and essence of gold, and they were used as painkillers (Webpage 'Opium throughout history' at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/history.html, accessed April 2016).

The Romans are reputed to have sprinkled the top of their bread with the nutty flavoured poppy seeds, the only part of the plant which contains no, or very little alkaloid (Le Strange 1977).

Grieve (1931) provides much information on both cultivating the plant and the history of its herbal medicinal uses. Rather surprisingly there does not appear to be any great fund of plant lore associated with this interesting, long cultivated and heavily used plant (Vickery 1995).

Nowadays, P. somniferum is a frequent escape from cultivation throughout its range, where it is usually grown either for oil-seed, or as a pharmaceutical crop plant for the latex from its unripe capsules. In past years, most recently in the period between 1880 and 1930 when agriculture was suffering one of its periodic cycles of decline in the British Isles, a variety with pale lilac flowers and whitish seeds was grown for opium in England, chiefly in Lincolnshire (Grieve 1931; Thirsk 1997).

However, and in spite of this, in most of the British Isles P. somniferum contains very little alkaloid due to our less than ideal climate (too little sunshine) for the species. It is mainly grown, therefore, as a garden ornamental of some minor culinary and herbal medicinal use. Nine garden varieties are listed, and these and others illustrated in Phillips & Rix (1999) book, Annuals and biennials. The garden or cultivated form is subsp. setigerum, occasionally referred to as subsp. hortense (Hussenot) Corb., but not so by Griffiths (1994) in his RHS Index.

Geographical origin of the two subspecies

Having been in cultivation so long, the native territory of P. somniferum naturally has become obscured, but it is generally agreed to have originated somewhere in SW Asia, probably in Anatolia (Kadereit 1986a). It has been suggested that subsp. setigerum may be a native of W & C Mediterranean, Cyprus and probably or at least possibly the Atlantic Islands (Kadereit 1986 a, b).

Fossil history

The earliest fossil remains of apparently cultivated P. somniferum in Europe were found in S Holland and in adjacent regions of W Germany, but according to Kadereit (1990) there does not appear to be any reliable information about where cultivation first began on the continent. I suggest that the most obvious place to look would be around the coastal area of the Tyrrhenian Sea, ie S Italy and E Sicily, and especially in Campania, since this was the most important early trading area in southern Europe of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians. These traders certainly brought the product from Egypt and very probably introduced the plant along with it (Boardman 1980; Grant 1987).

In Britain and Ireland, P. somniferum first appeared as seeds in the Bronze Age archaeological digs and it is common from the Iron Age onwards (Godwin 1975; P.J. Wilson, in: Preston et al. 2002).

Toxins

A total of about 25 alkaloids are obtained by the pharmacist from the opium latex, but six of these account for about 98% of the total. The six are: morphine (named after Morpheus, one of the sons of the god of sleep, Hypnos (Radice 1973)), codeine, papaverine, narcotine, narceine and thebaine (Stodola et al. 1992). Morphine is the most potent and the most present of these alkaloids. Although nowadays opium is chemically purified and separated, none of the drugs obtained have been superseded by any synthetic product.

Stock animals are very unlikely to graze the plant, but Opium Poppy IS EXTREMELY AND FATALLY POISONOUS, AND IT SHOULD NEVER BE USED FOR SELF-MEDICATION (Cooper & Johnson 1998).

Names

The origin of the genus name 'Papaver' appears to be obscure but it is a Latin name for a poppy, probably the medicinal P. somniferum, Opium or White Poppy (Gilbert-Carter 1964). It may have been derived from the Celtic 'papa', meaning 'thick milk', or Latin 'pappa' meaning 'milk', either way an obvious reference to the milky latex members of the genus contain (Melderis & Bangerter 1955; Hyam & Pankhurst 1995).

The Latin specific epithet 'somniferum' is a combination meaning 'sleep-bringing' or 'soporific' from 'somnos', sleep and 'fero', to bear (Gilbert-Carter 1964).

Apart from the English common name 'Opium Poppy' which refers to the origin of the drug, Britten & Holland (1886) list eight additional common names including 'Balewort', said to be derived from 'bealo' or Old English 'bealu', meaning 'bale', as in evil, mischief, woe, injury or pain (Cockayne 1864-6). The names 'Cheesebowl', 'Chasbol', 'Cheesebouls' and 'Chasse' all derive from the shape of the ripe capsule being considered as resembling round cheeses (Prior 1879). The name 'Mawseed' has some connection with the fact that the seed is provided for garden birds in winter. In German, it is called 'Magsamen', and in Polish, 'mak' (Prior 1979).

Threats

None.

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