The poppies are worn because in World War One the Western Front contained in
the soil thousands of poppy seeds, all lying dormant. They would have lain
there for years more, but the battles being fought there churned up the soil
so much that the poppies bloomed like never before. The most famous bloom of
poppies in the war was in Ypres, a town in Flanders, Belgium, which was
crucial to the Allied defence. There were three battles there, but it was
the second, which was calamitous to the allies since it heralded the first
use of the new chlorine gas the Germans were experimenting with, which
brought forth the poppies in greatest abundance, and inspired the Canadian
soldier, Major John McCrae, to write his most famous poem. This, in turn,
inspired the British Legion to adopt the poppy as their emblem.

(After reading this post, had to find out more, and found the above
information which some of you may find interesting)



ike" wrote in message
...

In article , M C C
writes
On Sun, 18 May 2003 22:36:33 +0100, Mike
wrote:

In article , M C C
writes

But the seeds must have already been lying there, just waiting
for the right conditions in which to germinate.

but how long could they have been waiting?

Years sometimes, Mike!

And the seeds must have
come from parent plants so I think you'd be pretty safe in assuming
that
poppies were fairly common in the corn and wheat fields.

but how long before?

For as long as those fields had been farmed, I would say.


This is beginning to bear out one of the stories :-))

Can you elaborate on the story? Somebody may have heard it, or of it,
before.



For as long as I can remember, certainly back to when I was a youngster,
I thought that the connection with the Poppy and Remembrance Sunday, was
because there was so much carnage during the First World War and so many
deaths and the blood flowed so much, that it 'Made the Battle Field look
like a field of Poppies'.

It was very recent, like a few days ago, that I heard that as the ground
had been disturbed so much, it was the right conditions for the
'dormant' Poppy seeds to germinate and thus the poppy petals blew about
the crosses.

That is why I asked the question, 'did poppies grow there in 1912 and
1913', possibly not.

I wonder how many other tales, given to me in what I thought was a true
version and in good faith, I have believed:-{

Now about this Tooth Fairy . . . . . . . . . . . ;-)

Mike
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