Three stages of a common poppy flower (Papaver rhoeas): bud, flower and fruit (capsule). The species, which grows up to 70 centimetres (28 in) in height, has large showy flowers which measure 50 to 100 millimetres (2 to 4 in). The flower stem is usually covered with coarse hairs that are held at right angles to the surface. The later capsules are hairless, obovoid in shape, and less than twice as tall as they are wide, with a stigma at least as wide as the capsule.
Poppies are soil seed bank plants which germinate when the soil is disturbed. After the extensive ground disturbance caused by the fighting in World War I, poppies bloomed in between the trench lines and no man's lands on the Western Front. They have since become commonly used in western countries on and before Remembrance Day each year, as a symbol of remembrance inspired by John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields".
