Poppies I Have Known
I wish I knew the varieties pictured above. I know the orange
California poppies,
but I don't know the names of the two varieties of red ones
and the white ones that are lined up behind
the calendulas. Here are some
close-ups of the different varieties:
Here's one variety of red.
Here's
another.
I do know that my poppies are doing strange things that don't look right to me.
Look at this California
poppy that has been a great bloomer on the slope. All of a sudden it starts
leaning
away from the center, leaving a whole in the middle and looking sick. I
don't remember this happening last year.
I removed another one that was in front
of the red poppies in the top picture, and it had started
looking like this one
and then today I noticed it seemed to be dead. I pulled the stems and they
came
up with no resistance. A gopher? It didn't look like a gopher's work.
Here's another
example. This time it's the red poppies. What does make poppies do this?
Just recently I
noticed the white poppies. They started to open a couple of days ago.
The buds
looked brown and I was wondering if it was some sort of disease. Then, when they
opened, they were white -- not red. And then I wondered if the buds were
different because the flowers were going to be a different color.
Here's the close-up
of flower and bud. Notice how part of the bud is brown and the rest is green.