Subject: Re: max. number of poppies

From: [email-masked] (Una Smith)
Date: 1 May 1995 14:32:13 GMT

[email-masked] (Phillip Bigelow) writes:
>I wouldn't mind planting a nice batch of oriental poppies ...

Poppies, and legal issues relevant to the United States, have been
thoroughly discussed during the past two weeks in rec.gardens.  If
your local Usenet server doesn't expire articles too quickly, you
may find the thread intact.

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From: [email-masked] (Phillip Bigelow)
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 22:28:54 GMT

I wouldn't mind planting a nice batch of oriental poppies in an open area of
the yard, in plain view of the world, so that everyone can enjoy their
beauty.  However, after gleefully sharing my scenario with an aquaintance,
he somberly explained to me that it is OK, provided I don't fill the whole
yard with them. Presumably, (and this "presumably" is the nature of my
question), there is somewhere on the law books a law that says a gardener
can only have "X" number of poppy plants, because of the potential for
illicit harvesting.  (opium, you see).
   Any truth to this rumor, or has my friend been rolling around in the
poppy fields a little too much?
  (I do know that ornamental oriental poppies DO indeed contain small
concentrations of opiate alkaloids....although not nearly in the
concentrations of the true opium poppies.  The alkaloids are found in the
entire plant, leaves and all).
 
-- 
                       <pb>     
     / "In evolution, sometimes you're a fly. \ 
     /  Other times, you're the windshield."  \ 
                       Louis Psihoyos