MORE eye-popping poppies

I don't want to take away from SP-members tarol and butitsadryheat, because they really do have some amazing photos of these flowers. Yes, it's the California Poppy, but they also grow here in central Arizona. And, I don't have to spend an arm and a leg driving to central California to see them. Some people call them "little bits of sunshine," which they are. Some people think they were brought over here from Europe, but it's the other way around. Once the California Gold Rush ended, this native North American species was brought to Chile, New Zealand, and Australia by way of poppy seeds found in bags of sand that the seafarers used as ballast for their ships. On the hillsides of California, California poppies tend to make their greatest shows on grazed lands, since animals avoid eating the bitter-tasting plants and eliminate most of the poppies competition. Indigenous natives of California boiled these poppies, or roasted them on host stones, to eat as a green. The Costanoan Indians rubbed a decoction of the flowers in the hair to kill lice; the Indians of Mendocino County used a poultice of fresh poppy root for toothaches and topically applied extract for headaches and sores; and Cahuilla women used the pollen as a cosmetic and the whole plant as a sedative for babies. The flowers of the species varies from dark yellow to orange, but plant breeders have expanded the range to include white, pale yellow, pink, purple, red and rose colours. California poppy is pollinated by beetles, but this job has been taken over by European honey bees in certain areas. (That is, what's LEFT of the European honey bees!) CHEERS!