Blooming in April : Corn Poppy – Pereg Agsani – פרג אגסני – The Princess's Earrings

April 2020 אייר תש"פ

I’m so excited to be able to write about reds! Not because it is one of my favourite colours but because it is the colour at the beginning of the rainbow spectrum and at the end of the rainbow in the Israeli wildflower spectrum. Readers of my blog will notice that I have often referred to the spectrum of colours that follow the Israeli seasons. I started in Autumn with the white squill (chatazv) , moved through the pinks in the winter with the meadow saffron (sitvanit), cyclamen (rakefet) and almond (shaked) and then moved onto the yellow in spring with the groundsel (savion) and the mustard (chardal). Now we are verging into summer the last of the reds is out, the poppy or pereg in Hebrew. ‘The last of the reds’ means it is preceded by two other red flowers, the anemone (calanit) in February and the ranunculus(nurit). The calanit being the national flower of Israel always gets all the attention but I must confess to poppies being my favourite red flower.

                                                                                                                                                  There is a lovely story I use in guiding (as do most nature guides in Israel) to help children differentiate between the three red flowers. Even adults tend to enjoy it.

Calanit

Nurit

It tells of three princesses who are all invited to a ball in a grand castle where they will meet their prince charming. Unfortunately when they emerge from their bedrooms in their finery they discover that they are all wearing the same red dress.

Every teenager’s nightmare! Instead of throwing an immature hissy fit they confer and work out a solution. Each of them will make a small change so that they can be different from one another. Calanit (anemone) will wear a pearl necklace around her neck, Nurit (ranunculus) will wear shiny red lipstick, and Pereg (poppy) will wear black earrings. Problem solved. Of course it has a happy ending and they all find their prince charming. I find this story doesn’t work so well in English as who would ever call their daughter Ranunculus? Not surprisingly my daughter is named after a flower - Yasmin, however Poppy is also one of my favourite names.

Photo: Galya Levy

Another little tip to identify it amongst the reds is that they grow in order of the Hebrew alphabet – Calanit, Nurit, Pereg. This also doesn’t work in English so it is lucky this blog is about wildflowers in Israel.

Now we understand according to the story that the poppy is a bright red flower which has perfect little black earrings on each petal, its stalk is also thinner and taller than the anemone. Its petals are wafer thin and sometimes they are almost translucent as the sun’s rays seep through them. My favourite part of the poppy is when it goes to seed. It literally creates a miniature salt and pepper pot which empties out its seeds when tipped over. In April there are fields of poppies so it is a perfect destination for a Passover trip however none of these fields are near Modiin where I live. I am happy to make do with the occasional scattering while walking in my usual haunts.

Mini 'salt' shaker

I first discovered that poppy wasn’t just a little black seed when I started to watch The Wizard of Oz. I would watch it Christmas Day growing up in London and each time hope that Dorothy and her friends wouldn’t stray off the Yellow Brick Road into the field of poppies but they always did. Sleep would overcome them according to the wishes of the Wicked Witch of the East. Then I would have to sleep with my door propped wide open until around Purim when poppy became just something you ate in hamentashen.   By the way, the reason we have poppy seed in humantaschen is because the Yiddish word mohn sounds like Haman from the Book of Esther.

The corn poppy featured here does not produce the poppy seeds that we eat as food which are also the source of opium. That is a different breed of poppy called papaver somniferum. The opium from this poppy was widely used in this region during the Ottoman period. It is now illegal to grow it in Israel but there are some that escaped and grow wild. A reliable source knows where to find some near Hadassa Ein Kerem , unfortunately that would not be recognized as an ‘essential journey’ in these restricted times. Next year anyone?

The name somniferum gives a clue to poppy seeds being used as a natural sleep remedy. Up to only a few decades ago mothers would give babies milk that had had poppy seeds soaking in it. Before you go running to the supermarket modern day poppy seeds are manufactured to not contain any narcotics. 

I feel that poppy seeds were a strong part of my childhood. My mum is crazy about seeds (maybe she was a bird in a former life) and every Friday night she would eat up the remaining poppy seeds that fell from her challah. 

Once the poppy season finishes so too does the wildflower colour spectrum and come May onward the flowers come out in a mixture of colours, generally much more muted.  However this applies to flowers straight from the ground or on bushes, not to trees.  Watch this space for a bright coloured tree flower coming up next month!

Photos courtesy of Yasmin Maissel

Editing courtesy of Elizabeth Kay From HaChamama Shel Elizabeth