Wild Poppy
Name. Called also Corn-rose.
Description. The wild poppy, or corn rose, has long and narrow leaves, very much cut in on the edges into many divisions, of a light green colour, sometimes hairy withal; the stalk is blackish and hairy also, but not so tall as the garden kind, having some such like leaves thereon as grow below, parted into three or four branches sometimes, whereon grow small hairy heads bowing down before the skin breaks, wherein the flower is inclosed, which, when it is full blown open, is of a fair yellowish red or crimson colour, and in some much paler, without any spot at the bottom of the leaves, having many black soft threads in the middle, compassing a small green head, which, when it is ripe, is not bigger than one's little finger's end, wherein is contained much black seed, smaller by half than that of the garden. The root perishes every year, and springs again of its own sowing. Of this kind there is one lesser in all the parts thereof, and differs in nothing else. This is called the Welch poppy, or papaver Cambricum.
Place. The garden kinds do not naturally grow wild in any place, but are all sown in gardens where they grow.
The wild poppy, or corn-rose, is plentiful enough, and many times too much in the corn-fields of all counties through this land; and also upon ditch-banks, and by hedge-ides. The smaller wild kind is also found in corn-fields, and also in some other places, but not so plentifully as the former. Time. The garden kinds are usually sown in the spring, which then flower about the end of May, and somewhat earlier, if they spring of their own sowing. The wild kind flower usually from May until July; and the seed of them is ripe soon after the flowering.
Government and virtues. The herb is Lunar; and of the flowers and seeds is made a syrup, which is frequently, and to good effect, used to procure rest and sleep in the sick and weak, and to stay catarrhs and defluxions of thin rheums from the head into the stomach and lungs, causing a continual cough, the forerunner of a consumption; it helps also hoarseness of the throat, and when one has lost their voice, which the oil of the seed does likewise. The black seed boiled in wine, and drank, is said also to stay the flux of the belly, and womens' courses. The empty shell, or poppy-heads, are usually boiled in water, and given to procure rest and sleep; so do the leaves in the same manner; as also if the head and temples be bathed with the decoction warm, or with the oil of poppies, the green leaves or heads bruised, and applied with a little vinegar, or made into a poultice with barleymeal or hogs' grease, cools and tempers all inflammations; as also the disease called St Anthony's fire. It is generally used in treacle and mithridate and in all other medicines that are made to procure rest and sleep, and tease pains in the head as well as in other parts. It is also used to cool inflammations, agues or phrenzies, or to stay defluctions which cause a cough, or consumption, and also other fluxes of the belly, or women's courses; it is also put into hollow teeth, to ease the pain, and has been found by experience to ease the pains of the gout.
The wild poppy, or corn-rose (as Malthiolus says) is good to prevent the falling-sickness. The syrup made with the flower, is with good effect given to those that have the pleurisy: and the dried flowers also, either boiled in water, or made into powder and drank, either in the distilled water of them, or some other drink, works the like effect. The distilled water of the flowers is held to be of much good use against surfeits, being drank evening and morning: it is also more cooling than any of the other poppies, and therefore cannot but be as effectual in hot agues, phrenzies, and other inflammations, either inward or outward. Galen says, the seed is dangerous to be used inwardly.