I purchased some Icelandic poppies for my yard this year, not really knowing much about these flowers beyond the fact that they are perennials and that I enjoy other varieties of poppies. Known to scientists as Papaver nudicaule, these plants produce delicate, papery blossoms that are rather short-lived.I am more puzzled than disappointed with the relatively meager number of blossoms that appeared. I certainly need to experiment with environmental conditions, and perhaps successive years may prove more bountiful than my results this summer.Or maybe this ephemeral nature is just how poppies are: here one day, gone the next, just a short punctuation mark of color before the petals drift to the ground.
