Wild Opium

Opium poppies--Papaver somniferum--used to be quite common in Australian cottage gardens in the old days. They were brought by early settlers; probably both Europeans and Orientals.

When I was a child, in Orange, NSW, fifty years ago, we had big opium poppies growing wild in our paddock. We also had the little Flanders Field-type ones, as well; 'cepting they were more often various shades of salmon pink than the brightest red sold on Poppy Day.

The big pink and strawberry jam-red opium poppies were usually sticky with aphids sucking milk, and picking the flowers always made one's hands all messy, with the gooey latex. Opium poppies don't have any hairs on their stems. That's how you tell it's opium. Other poppies always have hairs on their stems.

There's always a lot of hysteria about growing cannabis illegally, but wild opium has always grown about the place. I was once admiring a beautiful white horse, by the suspension bridge, in Canowindra. It had blue eyes, and a yellowish mane. There were all opium poppies and smaller poppies growing along the fence. A very pretty scene, indeed.

Opium poppies grow along roadsides; and railway lines; and in vacant lots. You can't stop them! I saw some opium poppies, a few years back, growing in a vacant lot--on government premises; a demolition site--at Forbes, NSW. They were very pretty, and blooming out of rugged gravel and concrete rubble.

I've always liked to admire opium poppies. My boyfriend thinks they are pretty, too. I like poppy seed buns--the horseshoe type. So delicious.

I only take tea and coffee and chocolate. I don't take (or believe in) tobacco or booze, or illegal drugs; but I can't see the point in having an hysterical attitude to marijuana when alcohol and tobacco cause so much human suffering; destroy so many lives. It's all a rather double standard, as far as I can see. So it always amuses me when I see wild opium growing harmlessly. And looking so pretty, too. And no-one bats an eye-lid; coz they wouldn't believe it was opium if you told them! They walk right past the opium without realising what is growing on right in front of them.