Is This How Poppies Normally Start Out?

Sorry if these questions are dumb. I am new to growing poppies.

Last fall, I spread about a pound of poppy seeds that I got from a wildflower farm near here. I scattered them onto the empty lot next door so that it wouldn't look so bad.

Several poppy plants have come up with profuse foliage, but there is a small area that has a bunch of what look like tiny poppies with virtually no foliage. They are tiny, about 3-6 inches high, on a single stalk with a few small leaves only on the stalk. Are these the way that they normally start out? Will these grow into normal sized poppies?

Sheral

Here is a picture of one that is not open yet.

That is not a "normal" bloom. I find them in my garden now and then and attribute it to being overcrowded and late germinating (or perhaps being zapped by a UFO from the far side of the moon. lol) They should come up much larger than what you have shown. Someone else will hopefully have a better answer for you.

Balvenie: Nice shirley poppies.I like the two/tone color.

Lily13, what type of poppy seeds did you plant?

They came from the Wildseed Farm in Fredricksburg, Texas. I believe that they were supposed to all be Corn Poppies. However, I have had two plants bloom so far, and one appears to be a Shirley Poppy as shown below.

One of the tiny poppies that came up about a week ago was pure white, and the rest have been the orangey red as shown in my first picture. There were absolutely no poppies of any kind in that field last year.

Here is a picture of the other one.

lily13-

I'm no Poppy Maven---I only know that they're among my favourite flowers. I think your 'faerie' poppies are sweet! For all you know, they represent some type of mutation--a new species. The mutation idea is really not so far-fetched; if they mature and produce 'normal' [containing viable seed] pods, you should grow another batch from these seeds. If the new crop is successful, aside from being teeny, then perhaps you have a new poppy; you could call it The 'Titania' Poppy, after the faerie queen in Midsummer Night's Dream [if I mangled names and titles, I apologize to any English Language or Literature professors out there!].

Please don't trash the cute little things [if you haven't done so already!] !

I winter sowed these in plastic milk jugs and didn't get them planted until a month ago, and I guess they got stunted in the jugs? Still pretty cool though, not even a foot high. It's the only flower in this area right now, everything else is either coming or going.

Nice!photos of Shirley poppies.

Claypa ... interesting theory about being stunted during the ws'ing process. I was wondering the same thing about some of mine. I noticed this morning that I had a teeny little poppy bloom instead of the big plant/bloom I was expecting.

Several years ago I mail ordered 3 sedum plants. I didn't have the garden area ready yet so I planted them in a "holding" spot. The 2 outer plants overshadowed the one in the middle during the time I was getting the garden ready. When I moved them to their homes, the plant that had been in the middle stayed small. I expected it to "grow" the next year, but it never did. Several years later it was still a "dwarf".

I'll be curious to see what happens with my "fairy" poppy. Will the seeds revert to the original characteristics???

I also have several 'fairy' poppies.. one was so tiny I could hardly see it. I do have good eyesight.. it was just miniscule.. too small to even tell individual petals. There are 2 others by it that are only slightly bigger. I thought it was because I did not plant them soon enough and the temps have been so hot, they just hurried to bloom before the heat cooks them.

Tammie

Dozens more of these 'faerie' poppies have come up in the field. There are all different colors, including some with white edges and even a couple of white flowers with pink edges. I have carefully watered them (with a turkey baster!), and even given some a bit of miracle grow, but none are sending out any additional leaves or stems. These tiny poppies just send up a single stem with a flower and a few leaves on that one stem. My regular poppy plants have had as many as 45 flowers in bloom at one time on a single plant. I just do not understand the difference.

So far, I have not cut any of them down, and will try to harvest any seeds that may be produced (I will probably need a microscope to see them). The rest of my regular poppies seem to have run their course, but the 'faerie' poppies are still coming.