Common Poppy - Papaver rhoeas

Alternative names
Poppy
Description

Medium height roughly hairy plant usually branched. Flowers scarlet to pale red, 7-10 cm across with the petals overlapping, often with a black blotch at the base, anthers bluish. Flower stalks with spreading hairs. Seed capsule rounded.

Similar Species

Other small red Papaver species

Identification difficulty
ID checklist (your specimen should have all of these features)

Seed capsules rounded (less than twice as long as wide).  The flowers are very variable in colour - often bright scarlet and blotched but can be white, pink, mauvish or light red, or unblotched (as in the 'Shirley' poppy seed-strain commonly grown in gardens and often escaping). Anthers bluish-black.

Recording advice

Photo of seed capsules.  Not all plants can be identified from a photo of the flower

Habitat

Cultivated fields, bare and waste places, field boundaries and roadsides.  Often grown in gardens and escaping.

When to see it

June to October.

Life History

Annual.

UK Status

Found throughout Britain, but more localised in Wales and Scotland.

VC55 Status

Fairly common in Leicestershire and Rutland. The Flora of Leicestershire published in 1988 states that it occurred in 328 of the 617 tetrads.

In the current Checklist (Jeeves, 2011), it is listed as an Alien archaeophyte (i.e. an old introduction that first appeared in the wild in Britain before 1500) and locally frequent.  

Leicestershire & Rutland Map

MAP KEY:

Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2020+ | 2015-2019 | pre-2015

UK Map

Species profile

Common names
Corn Poppy, Common Poppy
Species group:
Wildflowers
Kingdom:
Plantae
Order:
Ranunculales
Family:
Papaveraceae
Records on NatureSpot:
166
First record:
16/06/2006 (Calow, Graham)
Last record:
02/09/2024 (Brown, Jennifer)

Total records by month

% of records within its species group

10km squares with records

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