Californian Poppy is an Eschscholzia as you say but Welsh Poppy is a Meconopsis, M. cambrica.

I so wanted to say about 5,174 miles ... sorry Sheila! Just having a mad moment. :o)

Many thanks Bulba . . . but is there any difference in their appearance?! i.e. how do I tell which ones I have seeding themselves around the garden?

Lol Shirley - very good :)))

The way I can tell is that Welsh poppies don't have the large pointy seed pod coming out of the middle of the flower like the Californian poppies do (does that make sense?) and they are more lemon colour than orange.

Thanks Cammomile. I just went out to take a photo, and the camera battery was flat! But my poppies are an orangey yellow and have pointy centres, so now I know that they are Californian :)

Welsh poppies are bright yellow, one of the nicest yellows there are and the flowers are quite flat when open. Cal. poppies have very feathery foliage and the flowers tend to be more cup shape.

try google images

Thanks very much Badfish for the extra info (we must both have been writing at the same time).

I have orange meconopsis. their leaves and stems are hairy too. the flower bud looks like a typical native poppy too.
the californian bud case looks like a pixie hat. I used to tell my girls the pixies and fairies had been having a dance in the night and if they looked carefully they'd find hats that the pixies dropped in their excitement.

I used to love visitin g a neighbour when I was about 4 and he allowed me to pull off the little caps from his Californian pollieswhen they were ready - funny how treats like this stay with you all your life...

The leaves are different too - the Welsh ones are bright green and the Californian ones are more finely divided and much more bluish.

... And then there are SPANISH POPPIES!. LOL.

Thanks Eileen and Stera - great memories :)

My husband came in from the garden today asking "what are those yellow poppy looking flowers?" Dah!

I like that, Sbg!

My granny told me that when she was a little girl (over 100 years ago now) her father used to put tiny little celluloid baby dolls inside poppy heads so that when they opened, the "fairy babies" were discovered by his three daughters! (I'm not quite sure how confusing that might have been...)

Cammomile . . . my husband thought that our yellow poppies were 'evening primroses', and we've certainly got a lot of 'amnesia' in our garden!!

We've got amnesia everywhere, Sheila!

Absolutely Melchi . . . these days my brain is definitely leaking!

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