Known by several forenames including Common, Field, Corn and Flanders - every November they are worn in Commonwealth countries in memory of those who fell during the Great War - the particular colour of this poppy is only rivaled, but not matched, by one other British flower... the Scarlet Pimpernel. My ”Familiar Wild Flowers” (F. Edward Hulme - Cassel & Co. 1906) relates the impact of its colouring by saying... ”Though the Marsh Marigold flower is a perfectly pure and brilliant yellow; the White Campion, a white of spotless purity; the Borage as deep and unsullied a blue as could possibly be met with or imagined - these colours, beautiful as they are, must yield in brilliant strength and intensity to the scarlet of the Poppy.”
I love them as they appear in early morning light, back-lit by the rising sun, damp with dew, fragile petals from the newly emerged flowers rising above the nodding heads of those about to cast off their protective sepals.
It surprised me, the first time I passed through the small town of Saché, in the Touraine region of central France, that there was not a bunch of teenagers swinging on this giant attraction... but there again, this is rural France, and there are no signs of spray-paint graffiti, nor trainers tied together and linked to the bar holding the primary red and blue coloured disks in perfect balance and with invisible strength against, and resisting with opposite force, the breezes of many seasons and years that have swirled over, around and through this simple, classic mobile sculpture by the American artist Alexander Calder. Perhaps the local population are mesmerized by the graceful, unpredictable slow-motion of this "live" creation... it has been located in their town square for many years, overlooked bu Calder's old studio on a hillside above the town.
Red Poppies are always a joy to see waving and bobbing about on a Summer breeze... these could almost be anywhere in the French countryside with fields and lanes throughout the land being bordered with swathes of this wild plants' bright, but delicately fragile, scarlet flowers.
