In 2009, I was delighted to see a little volunteer poppy with reddish-orange petals with a black basal stripe in my yard. It must have found a happy home in the sand-filled gravel mulch in the median because it self-seeded and appeared the following year, and every year since then in increasing numbers. These widespread natives of Europe immigrated with grain seeds and have naturalized in scattered localities east to west across the United States. I hoped for a mass of red poppies in my yard like the famous fields of Flanders poppies, but had to settle for a scattering of straggly, but none the less beautiful in their own way, flowers that many consider weeds.

FLOWER: April May. Stems 4-27-inches tall (10–70 cm) with a single flower. Flowers 2-inches wide with 4 reddish-orange petals, each 5/8-inch long (15 mm), often with a black basal spot or streak; anthers purple, buds nod; fruit is a slender, flat-topped pod 1/2–5/8-inch long (10–22 mm). The stem hairs near the flower lie flat against the stem (appressed) (use lens). Flowers are pollinated by small insects, and also are self-fertile.

LEAVES: Basal and alternate on stem, often clustered near base. Blades oval, pinnately lobed and toothed, to 7 3/4-inches long (20 cm), often much smaller in dry habitats; leaves do not clasp stem.

HABITAT: Dry, sandy, gravelly soils; yards, fields, roadsides, disturbed areas, foothills; desert grassland and scrub, pinyon-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: Common in the Albuquerque area at 5,000–6,500 feet.

RANGE: Scattered eastern U.S. to west coast; one herbarium record from NM from the Sandia foothills.

SIMILAR SPECIES: The popular Flanders Poppy, P. rhoeas, celebrated every Veteran’s Day in remembrance of the thousands who died on the battlefield in Flanders, France, during World War I, is larger, has a rounded pod, and spreading hairs on the stem beneath the flower.

NM COUNTIES: Bernalillo County, in the Albuquerque area: scattered on West Mesa, widespread in Sandia foothills. No other documentation for NM. Please email me locations and photos where it is observed to improve the range records.