Oriental Poppy

There are flowers you plan for and flowers that stop you in your tracks. 'Patty's Plum' is firmly in the second category. The first time I saw one in a garden — that enormous, crumpled, tissue-paper bloom in the most extraordinary dusky plum — I actually said 'oh' out loud to nobody.

Oriental poppies are fleeting. That's the deal. You get maybe ten days of flowers in late May and early June, and then the whole plant collapses into a rather untidy heap and disappears until next year. Some people find this frustrating. I think it makes those ten days feel like a gift.

The colour of 'Patty's Plum' is the thing. It's not purple, not pink, not brown — it's somewhere between damson skin and old silk, with a dark blotch at the base of each petal that gives it a kind of moody depth. In certain lights it looks almost grey. In others, it glows.

You can cut them for the house if you sear the stem ends over a flame the moment you cut them — they exude a milky sap that clogs the stems otherwise. It's a faff, but one stem in a bud vase is so extraordinary that I do it every year. They don't last long indoors — two, maybe three days — but those are two very good days.