Is it possible/feasible for poppies to self-pollinate and what happens to a poppy that doesn't get pollen from another flower- anyone know? I ask (and it's much to late now) because I had an unusual poppy show up from the mixed pack that had stripes that looked really nice...I marked it to collect the seed but of course it's unlikely to produce those stripes again so I'm wondering where I can take this idea of trying to get those stripes back next year... any ideas?
If these are opium poppies each plant dies every year. If you wanted to maximize the striping the way to try and get it to happen would have been to pollinate the striped one with its own pollen, placing bags over its flowers to prevent insects from bringing pollen from other, non-striped poppies. If this worked out more stripes would appear among its offspring next year, with repeating the process eventually producing a seed strain that tended to remain constant.
Ah...I suspected it might be something like that but I read somewhere that most plants have some kind of built in mechanism to avoid self-pollination. Might still try this next year. It wasn't an opium poppy, just a regular one (corn poppy) that looked really striking. Don't all poppies plants die after they flower?
oh right...I actually should have known that because so many of the ones I've seen stay in the same place and don't appear to get bigger...but then there were two that randomly showed up in an odd location and they are most definitely Orientals. On that subject; I collected the seed from those Orientals but it might be worth the time to dig them up...do you (or anyone else) know what would be the best time to do this...after the leaves are dried up I'm sure but are there any special considerations for replanting?
