I had them last year and they looked like aliens before they popped open. This year they were so thick I pulled most of them out cause they were growing all around my clematis that I bought last year! Anyway, here they are (last yrs)

I call Romneyas "three-in-four" plants -- Three out of four planted die. They're in the same category as Fremontodendron, Trichostema, and a wealth of other such tempermentals. The good news is, once you have these plants off-and-running, they just go and go and go....with virtually no care. The trick is to get them started. First, make sure they're in the best place possible: full sun and perfect drainage. They'll take any kind of soil: clay, rocky, sandy -- as long as it drains well. They're also tolerant of quite a bit of shade with age but I think newbie plants need the sun. Secondly, what I've found to be a key to successful starting, is to plant the young plants between late November and early February. Then pray for natural rains. With these conditions, the plants put down the best roots and become summer-drought tolerant in their first season. If planted later, you have to deal with the dilemma of giving young plants without a root system enough water yet not so much during the warm summer when root rots become a problem. And they don't like/need mulch. Joe

and thge Prince of Orange is an ORIENTAL poppy, completely different flower and leaves. This one has much different leaves and flower form... Yes, Prince of Orange is an Oriental poppy; its' the Oriental poppies that are true perennials, as a class of poppy. And the Prince of Orange is a double orange, just as the picture you showed. I'm not saying yours IS Prince of Orange, I used the owrds "similar to" above, but I used that as an example to point out the difference between a double and a single petalled flower that was orange. The Papaver somniferums can be slightly perennial and have very different light colored foliage with large leaves, but the regular old heirloom orange ones are typical Oriental types with typical dark green jagged foliage as opposed to somniferums which have light colored much larger leaves, often referred to as lettuce leaves. Is yours a P. somniferum with that lighter colored foliage with larger leaves which are very different from the typical Oriental poppy foliage? Carolyn

Wow, those red ones are very pretty! I got some 'Mikado' in a seed trade, however the seeds did not sprout. Perhaps they are not a very vigorous cultivar. I think I'm going to buy some and give it another try. I have 'Purple gleam' and 'Linen white' (which is more cream colored) in the front garden and they reseed prolifically every year. Never have to sow those. They look nice along the edge of the driveway. In this climate, they are annual and have a nice flush of blooms in late Spring/early summer, then die back a bit in the heat and bloom less. I usually shear them to tidy them up, and they perk up in the fall. I have no idea what their growth pattern is in California, where they are native. This is 'Linen white' -