Poppy

(Hardback)

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In Poppy Andrew Lack explores all aspects of one of our most familiar but declining flowers, combining history and biology with symbolic associations and connections with the arts. He describes why the poppy is so intimately associated with war and remembrance, and tells remarkable stories about the different varieties: the opiumpoppy, one of the oldest of narcotics, has had a profound influence on human history; the phrase 'tall poppy syndrome' is now used to describe envy of the success of a peer; and in many countries the poppy has come to symbolize weddings or death.

Reviews

"Gorgeously illustrated. . . . Poppy ranges widely in both period and subject, from Assyrian carvings of poppy capsules and Claude Monet's impressionist paintings of poppy fields to the use of poppy seed in modern cooking, and the grim ironies of the twenty-first-century Afghan opium trade. But the book is probably at its strongest with the science of poppies, particularly their botany. How fascinating to know that as the corn poppy spread from its presumed origin in the eastern Mediterranean northwards into Europe, it changed both its method of pollination from beetles to bees and its color: and that these two facts are interrelated by natural selection."-- "Lancet"

Author Bio

Andrew Lack is a lecturer in biology at Oxford Brookes University. His previous books include Redbreast: The Robin in Life and Literature (2008), Instant Notes in Plant Biology, with David Evans (2005), and The Natural History of Pollination, with Michael Proctor and Peter Yeo (1996).