Opium Poppy Seedhead

Opium Poppy seedhead from last year, Papaver somniferum.  Nashenden Down Nature Reserve, 14 April 2012.

Among the dried remains of last year's grasses and seeds at Nashenden Down were a few like this, mostly unremarked, which is a shame, because their bone-like beauty is exquisite.  This is not a normal field poppy like those whose image we wear every year in remembrance of the World War I dead.  The shape is typical of the much more flamboyant Opium Poppy.