Latest Surprise From My Ladybird Poppy

So far, I've had lots of what I call "standard" flowers on my Ladybird poppy (Papaver commutatum), which is a deep red with a black spot at the base of each of the four petals . I've also had a few "non-standard" flowers - red with black spots and white edging around each petal, lighter red with spots and white edging around the petals and the spots, deep red flowers with a horizontal line where the black spots should be...on flowers which are half the size of the standard flowers, and a beautiful shade of pink with a white centre and no black spots.
Today, I discovered this beauty !


This one is more of a pinkish red, has a hint of white edging around the petals, has narrow vertical streaks in place of the spots and a white inverted "v" at the top of each streak...and...wait for it...

This latest flower has EIGHT petals instead of the standard four !

 

Put a bag over it as it starts to die and save the seeds. Maybe it will produce more like it next year. Looks very pretty,
Jenny

 

Thanks Jenny
So far, I have been puting a label on each stem of the non-standard flowers. You know those plastic strip labels you get on some garden centre bought plants ? Wraps loosely around a stem by passing the end through a slot on the other end of the label ?
I am using a wax based pencil to write "Papaver commutatum "Ladybird" - Sown Autumn 2014" on one side, with a description of the flower colour and markings, plus which month it flowered, on the other side.
I'm checking the seed pods daily so that I can snip them off when ripe but before they disperse any seed. I have brought a few seed pods from the standard flowers indoors to see if they ripen on a sunny windowsill, as suggested by Sheal.
My garden is in a windy location although there is some shelter from my fence, so I'm not sure that bags would stay in place.

 

Wow, looks great!

 

Very nice!

 

Sheal's suggestion to ripen the seed pods indoors has worked. As soon as I noticed that two of the pods had opened slightly, I shook each one over a piece of paper and now have hundreds (thousands ?) of poppy seeds

I then went outside and snipped all of the other "fat" seed pods off the plants, but I did find a few that had already opened so have more than likely self sown.
I now have two jars of water in the house with poppy seed pods in them. One jar has the pods from flowers that I hadn't labelled because they were from standard red flowers with black spots. The other jar has all of the labelled seed pods in it. I've left the labels on the stems so that I know which non-standard flower they have come from.

Since posting this thread, I've had two more of these double flowered poppies. Both are good, healthy looking big flowers so hopefully I'll get lots of seed to grow on to see if they come true.

if anyone wants some of my poppy seeds, just ask .

 

I'm glad to hear the drying of the pods worked. Can I ask why you are putting pods in jars of water please?

 

Hi @Sheal, The pods are still on stems and I put them into jars of water so that they don't dry out too quickly before they ripen enough to collect seed from. A few of the pods are almost ready to open so I'll be collecting the seed from those in the next day or so. Other pods are still green, some of which only dropped their petals over the last few days. Those pods will take about 2 - 3 weeks to ripen and dry out so I don't want them to dry up and die before then

I accidentally cut the stem for one pod too far down and didn't notice until afterwards that I'd cut it below a branch to another stem. That other branch still had an unopened bud on it.
The bud opened on Saturday so I decided to try hand pollinating it with its own pollen to see what happens. This one was a pink flower with a white centre.
The petals all dropped off last night so I have labelled the stem/seed pod as "P. commutatum "Ladybird". Pink flower with white centre - August 2015. Hand pollinated with own pollen 8/8/15."
I then moved that stem into the jar with the other labelled stems/seed pods so that I know what it is.
One more thing I have noticed is that the seed pods from red flowers are dark on the top and the pods from flowers that are red with white or pink with white are light on the top. That's useful to know when I'm puting the seed into little envelopes. I can mark each envelope as containing seed from pods which have light or dark tops, which *should* equate to having seed from poppies with either a dark centre (Red with black spots) or a light centre (pink & white or red with white markings). Ideal for the pods I've collected which are not labelled

I have some 180 cell plug trays and ingredients to make my own seed compost, ready to do some trials with these poppies. I'll sow some this autumn and some next spring.


Pink flower showing light markings on top of the seed pod.


Red flower showing dark markings on top of the seed pod.


Ripening pod from a pink flower. As the pod ripens, the markings on top stay like this or turn lighter as the pod dries up.


Ripening pod from a red flower. You can see here that the markings on top of this seed pod are more defined and very much darker than the ones on the pod from the pink flower.

 

I'm sorry CreakyJoints but I really can't see the point of putting the pods in water. You're just delaying the natural process of the seeds ripening, it could even damage them. You can pick the pods while they are green and drop them into envelopes or paper bags and they will dry out just the same and provide you with seeds.