http://thyra2005.blogspot.com/2011/11/corn-poppy-and-opium-poppy.html
A few excerpts from link
Internationally: Most species of poppies are attractive and are cultivated as ornamental plants. A few species have other uses, principally as sources of drugs and foods. The opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) is so widely used, for both drugs and food, that its worldwide production is monitored by international agencies.
The Corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) is a wild growing papaver species, which usually has got red tepals around a black center. This poppy is the largest and most common of three wild papaver species in Denmark, and it has got its name because it was earlier common as a weed in the corn. Its natural habitat is most of Europe, North Africa, Caucasus, Iran and the Indian subcontinent. In Denmark the Corn Poppy is common in fallow fields and in unfertilized cornfields. The red-flowered corn poppy is of wartime remembrance. It's a common weed in Europe and is found in many locations, including Flanders, the setting of the famous poem "In Flanders Fields" by the Canadian surgeon and soldier John Mc Crae.(WWI)
The Corn poppy is one of the most beautiful among weeds. The red flowers arrive in the high season in summer, and each plant can produce about 20.000 seeds. Some seeds sprouts at once. The poppy is a strange and unstable plant. It does not thrive in well cultivated and cleansed soil, and it is rarely seen in the cornfields, but if the soil is allowed to fallow without treatment from field tools, then the poppies sprouts up in numbers. At midsummer time whole landscapes can be bright red with those fine silken flowers. The milk from the plant is bitter and poisonous. The close relative Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, is cultivated in many places for extraction of opium from the sap of the seed capsules. The opium poppy is about 30 -90 cm tall, it has large white or pale purple or variegated flowers during summer. There are sorts with double flowers
The many seeds from the capsules keep their germination ability for a long time In favorable conditions a field can unexpectedly be blood red with poppy flowers. In some places the corn is covered in poppies. The deep red poppies were in a place explained by that they came from the blood of fallen soldiers in a battle with the Swedes in 1659. But it was also said that the flowers came from the blood of Andalusian stallions, killed by the Spaniards before they went back to Spain. In a certain field at Clausholm castle in the Randers district some unusually large and dark red poppies grow, a Spanish soldier was executed here for insubordination. A Catholic legend says that poppies grew from the blood of Christ at Golgatha, and the flower became a symbol of the healing, sin-forgiving life herb.
Superstition:
The many seeds from the capsules keep their germination ability for a long time In favorable conditions a field can unexpectedly be blood red with poppy flowers. In some places the corn is covered in poppies. The deep red poppies were in a place explained by that they came from the blood of fallen soldiers in a battle with the Swedes in 1659. But it was also said that the flowers came from the blood of Andalusian stallions, killed by the Spaniards before they went back to Spain. In a certain field at Clausholm castle in the Randers district some unusually large and dark red poppies grow, a Spanish soldier was executed here for insubordination. A Catholic legend says that poppies grew from the blood of Christ at Golgatha, and the flower became a symbol of the healing, sin-forgiving life herb.
People who live at the moon have bats as cows and poppies as corn. In H.C. Andersen's fairy tale "The Wild Swans" bewitched toads change into poppies.On the island Tåsinge (south of Funen) parents warned their children not to pluck the flowers from "the herbs of the devil". If you smell a poppy three times you'll get cramps. The poppy capsules were often placed on gravestones as a symbol of death being the sister of sleep.
