Renees Garden (reneesgarden.com) offers the seeds of several California poppy varieties and mixes: Buttercream, whose nearly white flowers have a hint of yellow; copper pot, with burnt orange blooms; Dusky Rose, showing off colors in the pink to magenta to wine red spectrum; Tropical Sunset, a mix of fiery gold, orange, and red poppies; Tequila sunrise, consisting of “luminous soft cream” and “stained glass red” flowers.
There are other poppies you might try, as easily germinated as our own native species. The corn or Flanders Field poppy (Papaver rhoeas) is often seen on the lapels of people collecting for war veterans. This tradition started during World War I with the publication of poems that depicted the red poppies growing on the battlefields and between the soldiers’ graves in Flanders, Belgium, as if they were the blood of fallen heroes. Shirley poppies, bred from corn poppies outside Shirley, England, in the 1880s, come up in red, pink, rose, lilac, salmon and white. Among them is a double-flowered variety known as French Flounce with thickly ruffled or fringed blossoms. Peony poppies (Papaver paeoniflorum) have dense peony or rose-like blooms. They grow effortlessly from seed and are close relatives of opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Be advised that any poppy species, if overly consumed, will produce narcotic, if not toxic, effects.
Poppies have a tendency to self-sow or naturalize in the garden. Other plants that do this include love-in-a-mist (Nigella Damascena). It’s not only pleasantly named but beautifully adorned as well. Very finely laced foliage complements flowers that are mostly sky blue but occasionally royal blue. Seed capsules are exotic-looking, tentacled globes. Love-in-a-mist is a fitting companion to larkspur (Consolida ajacis), whose flower spires also appear in various versions of blue, mauve and purple. Bachelor buttons or cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) are also notable for their blue blooms. The three species mentioned here have been grouped for their blue flowers, yet all of them are sometimes, if less frequently, seen in pink or rose as well.
Hollyhock (Alcea rosea), often seen growing in vacant lots, is the paradigm of a plant that thrives on neglect. It sprouts in asphalt and concrete as long as there is a tiny crack in which a seed can nestle and a few drops of water can collect. It is most often seen in shades of pink, red, and burgundy, but white and yellow hollyhocks are also available. It will self-sow with alacrity, reaching six feet tall or more with hibiscus-like blooms studded along its flower stalks.
If you have ever been to Catalina Island, you will have marvelled at the naturalizing stand of perennials known as pride of Madeira (Echium candicans) that is situated on elevated terrain overlooking the entrance to the renovated casino building. At one time, my own front yard had turned into a veritable pride-of-Madeira forest thanks to the self-sowing proclivity of this plant.
Moving to naturalizing herbs, you can choose from cilantro or coriander (Coriandrum sativum), borage (Borago officinalis) and feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium). And don’t forget nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus), whose flowers and leaves are edible and whose giant seeds are great for kids to plant.
If you have a slope (or open terrain for that matter,) that was burned and you wish to get ready for seed planting, do the following. Clear the ground of rocks and debris of every kind. Do not remove roots of burnt plants since they will help to prevent erosion and the plants that they supported may yet regrow. Use a bow rake, with forged metal tines, to grade and smooth the terrain. Use the tine side for raking debris into piles and for rough grading and then flip the rake over and use the bow side for smoothing. You can flip the rake back to the tine side to make grooves in the soil surface. These grooves will give the seeds a foothold and decrease the likelihood of them being washed away by rain or irrigation. If the slope is very steep and erosion is a major concern, you will also want to lay down some jute netting and plant within the open spaces that the netting provides.
Sun-exposed slopes are hotter than level ground so it is essential that you consider installing an irrigation system if you have sloping terrain. Slow-moving rotary sprinklers are advisable for slopes since their leisurely rate of water will minimize runoff. Drip irrigation on slopes is also an option but is more expensive to install and maintain. If you have a small slope, you may wish to consider hand watering. The gentle spray of a fan nozzle hose attachment is appropriate for watering slopes since use of such a nozzle will mitigate erosion and runoff.
By the way, you will want to broadcast your seeds as evenly as possible and you can do this by mixing one-part seed with nine-parts construction-grade sand. Scatter seeds by hand or, for more precise application, use a hand-held seed spreader for the job. In the absence of rain, cover your seeds with a thin layer of compost, Nitrohumus, or some other soil amendment to act as a water blotter, holding in moisture until the seeds have turned into plants with roots that can mine for water on their own.
California native of the week: Many California natives require fire to germinate their seeds and so we could see some of them sprouting this winter and spring where wildfires burned. Moreover, although poppies are generally easy to germinate from seeds, our native Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri) is the exception. This species is distinctive not only in needing fire to germinate but requiring contact with smoldering pine needles to initiate this process. Flowers resemble giant fried eggs with large yellow centers surrounded by white, crepe-textured petals, complemented by blue-gray foliage with unpredictable, sharply lobed, leaf margins. This is an outstanding selection for post-fire erosion control on slopes as long as you keep distance between it and more delicate plants. Given half a chance, Matilija poppy rhizomes will send up shoots throughout your slopes or garden beds, squelching the growth of surrounding species. Matilija poppies have also proven themselves as long-lasting flowers for vase arrangements. Incidentally, if you wish to eschew burning pine needles as a pre-germination treatment for this plant, success has been recorded at sprouting seeds when they are soaked in rubbing alcohol for 15 minutes prior to planting. You can also dig up rhizome pieces, with leaves attached, and plant them horizontally in one-gallon containers. Leave them in the shade until new growth is evident. You can spot Matilija poppies growing on the slope west of the 405 Freeway near the Getty Center.
Do you have a personal poppy story you would like to share with readers of this column? If so, send it to joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions and comments, as well as gardening challenges and successes, are always welcome.