If you sowed a patch of your garden with Poppy seed you would have the
flowers growing there year after year. You might therefore say, "Surely
the Poppy is a perennial. I only sowed the seed one year, yet the
poppies appear again and again." That is because the plants sowed their
own seed. The flowers faded; then the seed-cases shed their seed upon
the ground. Next spring the seeds produced fresh plants. Most annual
wild flowers sow their own seed in this way, but we must not mistake
them for perennials because year after year they grow in the same place.

In your patch of garden you can easily prevent the poppies from growing
more than one year if you wish to do so. All that is necessary is to
pick off every flower before it fades. Then no seed will fall and you
will be rid of the poppies.

Mr. Hammond might do the same, you think, if he wishes to rid his field
of poppies. But you see there are many poppies growing among the wheat
all through the field. To get at each plant and cut off all the flowers
would trample down the wheat and do more harm than good. All that the
farmer can do is to have as many weeds as possible hoed up while the
wheat is young and short. Even then many more come up later in the
spring.

The seeds of the Poppy have no pappus like those of the Thistle and some
other plants; they are not blown far away by the wind, but fall close to
the plant. There are, however, an immense number of very tiny seeds in
each seed-case, as we see by opening the round cup-like case on a stem
from which the flower has fallen. This great number of seeds adds to the
difficulty of getting rid of poppies.

We, I am afraid, are hardly sorry that the poppies are among the corn