![]() The finest colors for mauve and smokey tones come from a strain called ‘Sir Cedric Morris’ and the grayest come from the ‘Mother of Pearl’ strains, which date back to 1889, and 1910 respectively. Since then, all Shirley Poppy selections have originated from that first selection, and many are still grown today. The name Shirley Poppies comes from where the first strain was developed, in the village of Shirley, in the United Kingdom where the vicar of a parish in the village made the very first selections, thus, isolating the first strains from wild poppies. ![]() Rather then completely red, the first strains were carefully selected for their pastel colors and muddy tints so stylish in the late 1800’s. rhoeas which have been selected for a color break from the wild species. Shirley Poppies are actually not a distinct species, but rather a strain, or even more correctly, multiple strains of the species P. Yet pop-cultural references abound – ‘the Wizard of Oz’ ,Martha Stewart, Etsy, Pinterest, Wedding Blogs – our digitally saturated web world informs us daily that we must grow or obtain ‘the poppy’, and crepe paper crafted ones aside, I am on a mission to inspire you to actually step away from your laptop, and to go grow some yourself, so that you can appreciate and experience the real joy of poppyhood. We live a world that can only imagine fields of poppies, their unique symmetry and their loose, gossamer thin, over-lapping, tissue papery blossoms on wiry stems, but we rarely experience their physical presence. Still, it the poppy may be he most mysterious (read-un-seen) ‘common’ flower in our visual lexicon, for the ‘idea’ of ‘poppy’ exists in the greater consciousness of most everyone (Close your eyes and you can visualize it in your imagination), yet we rarely can touch one aside from the more common Oriental Poppy seen in many perennial borders, or the Iceland Poppy, seen in most big-box stores in the spring. The poppy form is study of simplicity and poise, not as simple as a daisy, and not overly complex in form, it may suffer from the fact that school children rarely draw a poppy when asked to draw a flower. ![]() It’s hard to find someone who cannot identify a poppy form – a tissue papery, crepe like flounce of fragile petals and a central boss of stamens.
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