Tuesday 23 June 2015

More poppies than usual this year?

Common Poppy Papaver rhoeas
Image: courtesy of John Crellin
http://www.floralimages.co.uk/page.php?
taxon=papaver_rhoeas,1
Nice to hear yesterday from Daily Telegraph journalist Camilla Turner who was writing a piece about poppies: are there more of them around than usual this year? Camilla spoke to BSBI President Ian Denholm and two of our County Recorders, Mick Crawley and David Hawker.

Camilla's piece is here so do please take a look and leave a comment if you are noticing significantly more or fewer poppies than usual this year.

An email circulated to all our County Recorders has already raised a few comments. Ann in Surrey and Graham in Co. Down reported seeing fewer poppies than usual this year, but Jon Shanklin sends this comment from Cambs.:

"There are some fields red with poppies in Cambs. VC29.  I was beginning to think it was a special commemoration of the Great War.  I have 138 records of Papaveraceae in 2015, with all eight Papaver keyed in Stace being seen.  Common Poppy P. rhoeas is probably the most common, followed by Opium Poppy P. somniferum".

Update: Daily Mail On-line has also picked up on Camilla's poppy piece and here is what they had to say; I also had a reporter from The Times on the phone earlier, so watch out for the story appearing there too! 

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