Prickly Poppy plant in bloom
Last week while I was out photographing in the west desert’s Stansbury Mountain Range I saw a Prickly Poppy (Argemone munita) in bloom in the road that goes up to one of the canyons and had to stop to take images of it. I love the almost crepe paper look the flower petals have. The poppy is well named because the leaves and flower stems do have spines on them. Cattle won’t eat Prickly Poppy probably because of the prickly spines but in addition the sap of this wildflowers is said to be poisonous. I know when I was close to the plant those spines made me think “I wouldn’t want to touch that plant!”.
Prickly Poppy close up
The flowers are about 4 to 5 inches across, white with lovely yellow stamens and a dark pistil in the center. It looks a bit like a sunny side up egg. I did not notice or detect an aroma when I was close to the plant but there were plenty of bees flying around the blooms.
This lovely perennial is also called flatbud prickly poppy, Mexican poppy, thistle poppy, and chicalote.
Photographing birds is my passion but I can’t resist photographing wildflowers either when I don’t have a bird visible in my viewfinder!
Life is good.
Mia
Click here to see more of my flower, shrub and tree photos.
Thank you all!
I also have a book on wildflowers and I shoot them often to get the ID later on (which is the best part, it’s like detective work). Good whites on these shots.
I am so very glad that you couldn’t resist them. I couldn’t either.
I like both the birds eye view and the close-up of this pretty flower-great focus and detail.
This is a gorgeous specimen. I see these all the time, blooming along I-10 in west Texas, but they are never this big.
Very pretty! I can’t resist these either!! 🙂
lovely! Thank you.
I enjoy your work enormously.
of course you can’t resist them…If you like birds, you like flowers. Birds are flying flowers. Thanks for the bouquet. I love these flowers, too.