Poppy

-
Poppy, common name for a small family of herbaceous flowering plants occurring principally in the North Temperate Zone, and for its representative genus. The family contains about 23 genera and 210 species; many are important as ornamentals, and one species is the source of opium. Members of the family occupy varied habitats, but they are more common in open, well-drained areas. This preference helps explain why several members of the family, especially poppies, are bothersome weeds in cultivated fields. See also Bloodroot.

The representative genus contains about 50 species. The Oriental poppy is widely cultivated as an ornamental, and many color forms have been developed. The opium poppy produces several useful products. Its tiny seeds, produced in huge quantities in each of the plant's dry fruits, or capsules, are used in baking and produce an important drying oil. Opium is the dried sap, or latex, that is harvested from the capsules while they are still young. It contains many alkaloids, including morphine and codeine, that are useful in medicine. Heroin is synthesized from the morphine purified from the complex mixture of alkaloids in opium (see Drug Dependence).

The family shares its order with the fumitory family. This family contains about 16 genera and 400 species, also mostly found in the North Temperate Zone, with a few species located in mountainous regions of tropical Africa and South Africa. The most familiar member of the family is the bleeding heart; others are of minor ornamental importance.

The leaves are usually deeply divided and arranged in a rosette around the base of the short stem. The flowers have two to four sepals (outer floral whorls) and twice as many petals (inner floral whorls). The stamens (male floral organs) vary in number from six to many more, and the ovary (female floral organ) is superior (borne above and free from the other flower parts). The order characteristically has sap that is rich in alkaloids. The sap is clear and watery in the fumitory family, milky in the poppy family.

Scientific classification: Poppies make up the family Papaveraceae in the order Papaverales. The Oriental poppy is classified as Papaver orientale, and the opium poppy as Papaver somniferum. The family Fumariaceae is the only other family in the order Papaverales.

See picture of Opium Poppy and Golden Poppy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monocot and Dicot Seeds

-
Image
Monocotyledons (monocots) and dicotyledons (dicots) make up the two large groups of flowering plants, differentiated by their seed structures. Monocot seeds contain one cotyledon, or embryonic leaf. When these seeds germinate, the cotyledon remains below ground, absorbing nutrients from the endosperm, the starchy food supply in the seed. The coytledon transports these nutrients to the developing seedling. Dicot seeds contain two coytledons, which absorb and store the nutrients from the endosperm before the seed germinates. The cotyledons, thick with stored nutrients, emerge above ground during germination, and then transport the stored nutrients to the developing seedling. For a brief time, the cotyledons also serve as the first photosynthesizing leaves, but they wither and die when the true leaves emerge. related articles: flower flower variations in structure flower sexual reproduction flower pollination and fertilization flowering and the life cycle evolution of flowers angios
Read more

Gymnosperm

-
Image
Gymnosperm (Latin gymn-, “naked”; Greek sperma, “seed”), is a common name for any seed-bearing vascular plant without flowers. There are several types: the cycad , ginkgo , conifer , yew , and gnetophyte. Gymnosperms are woody plants, either shrubs, trees, or, rarely, vines (some gnetophytes). They differ from the other phylum of seed plants, the flowering plants (see Angiosperm ), in that the seeds are not enclosed in carpels but rather are borne upon seed scales arranged in cones. The gymnosperms are the most ancient seed plants; they appear to have arisen from fern ancestors in the Devonian Period. Cycads retain the most primitive characters of the extant seed plants. Gnetophytes are considered from morphological and molecular evidence to share a common ancestry with the flowering plants. Living gymnosperms are distributed worldwide, with a majority, particularly the conifers, in temperate and subarctic regions. Cycads and gnetophytes are mainly tropical to subtropical. There are ab
Read more

Cedar Tree

-
Image
Cedar (tree) is a common name for three or four species of large trees native to mountainous areas of North Africa and Asia. Cedar trees belong to the pine family, the members of which have needlelike leaves and, like all conifers, bear their seeds on scales clustered into cones. They differ from other members of the family in their evergreen four-angled leaves borne on short side-branches. The genus produces fragrant, durable, red-colored wood used in construction and cabinetry. The name cedar is also applied to other conifer trees with fragrant wood (see Cypress ). The well-known white cedar grows in swamps of the eastern United States and reaches a height of 24 m (80 ft). An arborvitae is also called cedar; western cedar and eastern white cedar are both important timber trees in the United States. Eastern red cedar, widespread in the eastern United States, is a juniper . A flowering tropical American mahogany is known as Spanish or West Indian cedar. Incense Cedar Native to wester
Read more