Plant-A-Day 2020 (Day 150) Papaver orientale Hybrids

The flower color of the usual Oriental poppy clashes badly with most other colors. However, it contrasts nicely with blue fowers and creates a stir with deep yellows. Luckily, I’m not a good enough gardener to eliminate every clashing flower scenario I see! And some of the color variants of this plant are remarkable.

I grow these plants from seed. When we first moved to the house about 25 years ago, I grew a strain called Pizzicato, which is shorter than the type species in a mix of colors. A few of these plants still survive in our driveway bed. I started seeds of the Fruit Punch strain in 2018 for use in the memory garden. I planted out about ten plants in 2019 and they are blooming in 2020. Several of them feature nice, soft pink blooms. Others are the orange-scarlet clashing color. I’m hoping for a white one or two.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to keep them watered and fed and hope to get them to grow a bit more so they throw more blooms next year.