Anybody know what kind of flowers these are?

Roadside garden by the ice cream stand.  This afternoon, around four.  Sunday.  May 16, 2010.

Comments

[actor212]

They look suspiciously like poppies

http://www.fire-horse.co.uk/Wind/slides/poppies.jpg

Note the pods.

[Gwen]

actor212's right -- oriental poppy,

[Chris the cop]

212 - are you kidding me? (I suspect you are) Poppies?
Did you take a few too many trips to the Golden Triangle in your younger days?

Keeping in mind that my knowledge of flowers is such that I am currently a fraud investigator for a bank, I'm thinking they're Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds.

[muddy]

The pods don't look right to me, they don't have the little cap. It's kind of early in the season for oriental poppies to make flowers let alone pods, I'd think. They are the color of California poppies but those flowers are usually smaller and not double. Also rather early for them.

I have double tulips, yellow with a red stripe which look very much like these flowers, but the seed pod left when the petals fall off doesn't look like that, it is thinner and vertically segmented. Those pods in your pic are hairy! I will ask my local horticultural expert/sister and report back later.

They are gorgeous though. I want some!

[Linkmeister]

Ah, but what Chris isn't telling us is that his current employer is a SEED bank. ;)

[joel hanes]

absolutely oriental poppies.
definitely not marigolds. not california poppies.

prbably not narcotic to any significant degree --
classic opium popppies are scarlet with black centers.

[Stefanie Murray]

They are oriental poppies and we have a whole bunch in our garden; if you would like some for your own garden we could dig up a few for you this fall.

[Beel]

Definitely poppies, most of which are not a drug issue anyways.

[muddy]

The Orientals have it! They are not the opium type. I was also told this: Perennial poppies; I have those in the front flowerbed although thought I had extirpated them. They're beautiful but wicked pushy, with underground roots that travel all over. Very brief blooming season too. They can bloom a second time if the stems are cut back.

[DeborahT]

I would say Iceland poppies, except that I've never seen them all one color before -- they usually present themselves in a variety of colors.

[actor212]

Muddy, I had the same thought as you did, that it's early in the season, but then I had daffodils by January 15 this year down in NYC, so Lance's season is probably accelerated as well. A good mulch overwinter and we've had some long stretches of sun in the northeast, it's certainly possible to force them up.

[Stefanie Murray]

actor 212 and Muddy: in Syracuse, at least, everything is early. My siberian irises are about to bloom! And all the oriental poppies have been blooming since last week.

[Cathie from Canada]

Yes, they are poppies.

[Rebecca Clayton]

Two reasons why you all are less than unanimous in poppy diagonsis:

1. Your picture is pretty but this view doesn't show the "key characters" of poppies. A shot of the flower head on, showing the naughty reproductive bits would clinch the identification.

2. These are a horticultural variety of oriental poppy, and they have been genetically mixed up, which is why they have extra whorls of petals, and are a different color than their wild ancestors. Those darn horticulturalists make flower id's tough.

[Victoria]

Ah... the papaver... I agree with Rebecca. There are many, many kinds of poppies. The ones you show are not Iceland, of which I have many in my back yard. Oriental is a good guess but can't know for sure without seeing dark centers. If the centers are yellow, then I would lean to Moroccan poppies ("Spanish poppies"). Could be a type of "peony" version of oriental, though. But poppy puts you in the field... a great big and wide field.

Here - from my local plant store - a picture of a Moroccan: http://www.anniesannuals.com/plants/plant_display.asp?prodid=1931&account=none