"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Mike Lyle wrote:

Way back, a Palestinian friend, who'd trained in agri in Turkey and
lived next-door to a commissioned officer in the Jordanian Police, very
much enjoyed telling the neighbour exactly what he, the neighbour, had
growing by his front door. The ossifer had no idea..!

It's not a rare casual here, and is ubiquitous in hotter climates.
If you want to boggle a parochial Californian gardener, tell him
that Papaver somniferum is a common garden plant in the UK :-)


I had a front garden full of opium poppes last year - from a dried flower
arrangement I threw out a couple of years ago and I mused on the irony.
There's a chemist round the corner and addicts walk past my house all day to
get their methodone. I doubt any of them know where Heroin comes from ....

Even when I chopped it all down and there was a stack of poppy straw, no one
took any interest ..

I'm not surprised they grow poppies in afghanistan ... the self-seeding is
exponential .. and last summer I noticed opium poppies appearing all over
town - I can only surmise that poppy seed must get in with wild bird food
people put out.

..