"Andy Spragg" wrote in message
...
Mike pushed briefly to the front of the
queue on Sun, 18 May 2003 22:38:35 +0100, and nailed this to the shed
door:

^ How long can/could a Poppy seed lay dormant in a piece of land and then
^ all of a sudden germinate and grow?
^
^ Not a silly question and I will explain later :-))

AFAIK about seedbanks in general, 50 years is par for the course.
Poppies may be different.

I'm guessing you had a similar experience to mine? A year or two ago,
an entire factory next door to my place of work was completely
flattened. In the six months or so before a new building was put in
its place, we were treated to the most spectacular multi-coloured
display of some sort of poppy - what I call powder-puff, I don't know
what they're really called. Goodness only knows where the seeds came
from but they must have been there a long long time.

--

So even a long nuclear winter will not completely sterilize the earth, after
10-20 years when the skies clear up come the poppies ??