Papaver orientale (oriental poppy)

Native to north-eastern Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and north-western Iran, where it inhabits the sub-alpine and alpine zones.

One of the earliest plant-collecting expeditions to the east of Turkey was made by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and Andreas Gundelsheimer, with Claude Aubriet as artist. The team set off from Paris in 1700 and reached Istanbul in early 1701 before sailing along the Black Sea coast to Trebizond (present day Trabzon). From there, they travelled inland, accompanying a caravan of around 600 men and animals for safety, reaching Erzurum on 15 June. During an expedition from there into the mountains, to visit the sources of the Euphrates, they collected seeds of Papaver orientale, which were subsequently grown in Paris, and then sent to England in about 1714.

Detail of Papaver orientale (Image: James Morley, RBG Kew)

A long-lived, herbaceous perennial with deep taproots. The leaves are mostly basal, deeply toothed and bristly-hairy. The flowering stems are 30–90 cm tall, without bracts and usually bear a solitary flower. The flowers are red or orange and typically have four petals. The anthers are yellow or pale violet, and there are 8–15 long-ridged stigmas. The fruit is a capsule up to 2 cm long.

A similar species of perennial poppy, Papaver bracteatum, has large, usually six-petalled flowers, with a dark blotch and bracts below the flowers. It comes from north-western Iran and the Caucasus Mountains.

Hand-coloured engraving of Papaver orientale by Sydenham Edwards in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (1788).

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Editor: Martyn Rix) provides an international forum of particular interest to botanists and horticulturists, plant ecologists and those with a special interest in botanical illustration.

Now well over two hundred years old, the Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants. Each four-part volume contains 24 plant portraits reproduced from watercolour originals by leading international botanical artists. Detailed but accessible articles combine horticultural and botanical information, history, conservation and economic uses of the plants described.

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Papaver orientale is cultivated as an ornamental.

The Millennium Seed Bank partnership aims to save plant life worldwide, focusing on plants under threat and those of most use in the future. Seeds are dried, packaged and stored at a sub-zero temperature in Kew's seed bank vault at Wakehurst.

Description of seeds: Average 1,000 seed weight = 0.2 g.
Collections stored in the Millennium Seed Bank: Three.
Seed storage behaviour: Orthodox.
Germination testing: 100 % germination was achieved on a 1% agar medium, at a temperature of 21°C, on a cycle of 12 hours daylight/12 hours darkness.

Papaver orientale is a suitable perennial for planting in long, rough grass and herbaceous borders. After flowering, the stems and leaves can be cut down, and the leaves emerge again in autumn or early spring.

Oriental poppy can be seen growing in the Duke’s Garden and adjacent to The Orangery at Kew, and in the West Mansion Border and Sir Henry Price Memorial Garden at Wakehurst Place.

Pressed and dried, and alcohol-preserved specimens of Papaver orientale are held in Kew’s Herbarium, where they are available to researchers, by appointment. The details of some of these can be seen on-line in the Herbarium Catalogue.

Search Kew’s science databases for more information on this species

Find out about the common poppy (Papaver rhoeas)

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Wiley-Blackwell)