Family: PAPAVERACEAE
I was delighted, a few weeks ago, to find a “native poppy” growing beside the Mt. Kiangarow track at the Bunya Mountains.I had not previously found it growing on a relatively unmodified site on basalt soil, so was pleased to find out that it seemed to be a genuine local.
Alas, my subsequent research revealed that this may not be so!
Trawling the internet, I found a very good article by Tony Bean, of the Queensland Herbarium, on his new system
for deciding the probable status of plants, like this one, whose origin is disputed. He puts together a very convincing case that our “native” poppy is native in South Africa only.I have been happily growing it in my garden for years, and will go on growing it. Actually, it would be difficult to stop growing it, as it reseeds itself every year. I’m happy for this to happen, as it is an attractive plant whose spring flowers add a touch of an unusual shade of scarlet to the garden
But I’m disappointed.
4 comments:
I ''discovered'' this Poppy in my little town, Chrissiesmeer in Mpumalanga South Africa. According to my wild flower books, it is indigenous to S.A. I find the seeds extremely diffucult to germinate. .
Yes, I'm sure it is indigenous to South Africa. The question is whether it is also "endemic" to South Africa! Plants can be indigenous to more than one country. There are some other plants which are native to both our countries, so the idea that this might be an Australian native also is not an unreasonable one. But if it is a South African endemic, then its truly your own.
I'm astonished that you find the seeds difficult to germinate. I just throw them at the garden when they ripen in late spring, and they come up all by themselves when they're good and ready, which is usually after a bit of winter rain. They're coming up right now in my garden, and I've been getting my hands dirty thinning them out. They flower better if they're not in a crowd.
If I want to grow them in punnets, I put the seeds in in late autumn.
I do hope you have better luck, if you try again.
Cheers,
Trish
True.. It might be indigenous to Australia too. we have frost in winter, and warm but not hot summers, it is a summer rainfall area. So I sow them in spring and summer, in sandy loam garden soil . I then ensure that the the soil does not dry out, but obviously the top few millimeters dries out often, but the seed is so minute, you cant really cover them with much soil.. or what do you think? The only time I had good results was when I sowed them in a plastic bottle.. so the soil was always moist, and rather hot.Then you have to transplant them into the garden but then they don't want to grow.. They seem to grow well in the grasslands over here (it makes good photos)
We have frost, too, but the area where I so carelessly throw the seeds about is probably sheltered from most of it. They just lie on top of the soil You would think the ants would get them, but perhaps there are just too many of those tiny seeds for them to find them all.
Most of our rain here is in summer, but there's usually a bit of a dribble in autumn and winter which is enough to get them going. Considerably more than the top few millimetres of soil would dry out after they germinate. Our winters can be very dry indeed, with the dryness peaking in August when any precipitation at all is a rare event. This doesn't seem to worry those tough little poppies, which have persisted all through the twenty-year drought which broke with such devastating results this year. I never water them. I can only think that the difference in our success rates must be attributable to the time of planting.
The argument that they are not Australian natives is based on their distribution, which is the south-eastern third of Australia. This suggests that they were brought by early white settlers, whose ships often called in at Capetown on their way out here. If they had found there way here naturally, we'd expect them to have radiated from the north of the continent. An example of a plant which is native to our two countries is Themeda australis, which we call kangaroo grass.
I find the Africa/Australia connection very interesting, as we have many related plants with a very ancient Gondwanan history, and then another suite which have spread much more recently (goeologically speaking), across the tropics.
Cheers,
Trish
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