Poppy Family

Papaveraceae (pa-pav-er-AY-see-ee)

Iconic Features

• Sepals usually pop off the flower
• Flowers often nodding
• Leaves often highly-dissected and fernlike

Description (Jepson)

• Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
  • 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
  • Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
  • Flower parts in fours and fives
  • Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
  • Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
  • Taproot system
• Annual, biennial, or perennial herbs
  • Also a few woody shrubs or small trees
• Leaves
  • Simple (not divided into leaflets) or compound (divided into leaflets)
  • Often highly dissected and fern-like
  • Alternate (1 leaf at each junction with stem)
• Flowers
  • Flowers are bisexual, often nodding, and of two types
    • Poppy subfamily (Papaveroideae)
      • Inflorescence (flower arrangement) is solitary and often large
      • Radially-symmetrical flower with a wide-open cup shape, petals usually in fours, and numerous stamens (male flower parts), e.g. poppy
    • Fumitory subfamily (Fumariaceae)
      • Inflorescence is usually a raceme (unbranched stem with stalked flowers opening from the bottom up)
      • Bilaterally-symmetrical flowers, with usually 6 stamens and 4 petals in two dissimilar pairs, e.g. bleeding heart
  • Sepals (usually green, outer flower parts) generally half the number of petals
    • Usually shed after flower opens
  • Ovary superior (above the attachment of other flower parts)
• Fruit is a capsule (a dry multi-chambered pod that splits open) with many small seeds
  • Capsules of some species open explosively

Notes

• Approximately 770 species worldwide
  • Found in temperate and subtropical climates, usually in the Northern Hemisphere
  • Includes poppies, cream cups, and bleeding hearts
• Plants produce a caustic latex, which is usually colored and may be milky or watery
• Pollinated mostly by insects, usually flies, wasps, or bees
  • Flowers in the Poppy subfamily (Papaveroideae) have numerous stamens offering pollen and lack nectaries
  • Flowers in the Fumitory subfamily (Fumarioideae) have only 6 stamens and offer pollen and nectar, the latter from a pouch or spur at the base of the 2 larger petals
• Seeds of some species, such as bleeding hearts (Dicentra species), have oily, fleshy appendages called elaiosomes, nutrient-rich food packages that attract ants
  • Ants carry the seeds back to their colony, feed the food packet to their larvae, and discard the seed, thus aiding in seed dispersal (Lengyel 2010)
  • This strategy for seed dispersal, called myrmecochory, is a kind of mutualism, as both the plant and ants benefit
• Many species contain narcotic alkaloids
  • Morphine and culinary poppy seeds both come from the opium or breadseed poppy, Papaver somniferum
• Scientific name from the included genus Papaver, first published in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus, from the Latin papaver, “poppy”
• The previously separate Fumitory family (Fumariaceae) was combined with the Poppy family due to the similar chemistry of its poisonous compounds and leaf traits
• Represented by 4 species at Edgewood

See General References

Specific References

Lengyel S. 2010. Convergent evolution of seed dispersal by ants, and phylogeny and biogeography in flowering plants: A global survey. Abstract. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 12: 43–55. Science Direct.

Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family