All I can offer is sympathy. (When I read your title I thought it had to do with whether it was safe or not to eat the seeds of opium poppy, 'Papaver somniferum'.) Somebody more knowledgable than I may ask you what specific kind of poppy you are growing. Also if you find any scat from the varmint you might describe that as well.

I was pretty surprised to discover that deer had been grazing in my yard a couple of different times this late winter/early spring, but a neighbor who is also a hunter examined the 'evidence' that was left behind and said there's no doubt it was deer, coming through after dark and leaving before dawn.

But now after three years of trying and waiting, I finally got my first Prickly Poppy 'Argemone plieacantha' bloom; big white petals with a bunch of yellow stamens in the center, so it looks like an egg, sunny side up. I seeded for two years and got nothing the first year, and just one plant last year, which is the one that bloomed this morning. But this year I also have almost a dozen new seedlings, so I have high hopes for the coming years that they will reseed and naturalize in some buffalo grass of mine and a vacant lot next to me. I hope the deer don't like them!

Shudavies - LOL, after rereading my Subject Line that does sound like I was going down that road, doesn't it? We have a relatively small, fenced yard, so I know it's not deer. I haven't seen anything out there besides squirrels and birds, and am wondering if one of them could be the culprit. It's so frustrating.

Hi Blue Iris,

What kind of poppies do you have? How big are they? Is just the bud being eaten or the foliage too? All the way to the ground? Do you have other perennials/annuals, and are any of them being eaten? Holes in leaves? Flower petals?

It is possible that you have a four-legged critter eating stuff that you're not seeing--they can manage to be amazingly invisible--but it could also be insects! If you do have rabbits around, there's a pretty good chance you'll find rabbit droppings near whatever they've been eating. It'll look like a bunch of small (1/4"?) round brown "marbles!" I'd make a bet, though, that it was either slugs or earwigs! Last year earwigs almost defoliated my rhubarb plant and were eating large holes in hollyhock leaves up to 3 feet above the ground! Other things had damage too. I verified that it was earwigs when I found them on the plants even in the daytime, but most of the major damage was done overnight when they come out. I got a small bag of soil insecticide granules and sprinkled a little around each plant that had damage and it really worked, but there were so many last year that I had to repeat it several times. I also put slug bait around some of the plants where I suspected slugs.

A couple weeks ago I planted a small Alpine Poppy that I got as a freebie in a pot with something else I bought, and after being gone a couple days I came back to find it had been eaten to the ground! I've also had some fairly minor damage to my rhubarb, hollyhocks, ornamental sage, and purple coneflowers this year, so I got my insect granules out and put some around each plant, and now the new foliage is coming out undamaged. I think I need to put a grave marker out by the poppy though! I think the crown was too badly damaged for it to come back. Luckily poppies are easy to start from seed. I don't know why there was such an invasion of earwigs last year, but, gratefully, there are only a few this year.

Last year, when I was still posting on the perennials forum, there was a long thread about how much damage earwigs could do. Considering how small they are (and how big rhubarb leaves are), it's absolutely amazing! Unfortunately slug and earwig damage looks very much the same--irregular shaped holes of varying sizes. With either you can lift lower leaves and look in the soil next to the plant to see if you can find them, and with slugs you can look for (shinny) slime trails, but if I'm not sure, I put out bait/poison for both of them. With the soil granuals, it only takes a few sprinkled around. It's the stuff that's made for spreading on grass with a spreader to kill soil insects that are damaging the grass. I got Bayer brand, but I think any brand would work. I just made sure it specified that it was effective for earwigs.

By the way, when I saw the post I thought you were wondering if you could eat the poppy flowers! Like nasturtiums and pansies! And---eating opium poppy seeds (P. somniferum) IS safe! To get the opium you need to refine the sap that comes out of the seed heads!

Also, if anyone's interested, there's a myth that if you eat poppy seeds (muffins, salad dressing, etc.) it will be detected in a drug test. Not true! I absolutely LOVE (Kroger brand) poppy seed dressing and could practically drink the stuff straight out of the bottle, so the last time I was drug tested (I'm a flight attendant!), I asked and was told that the drug tests they do nowadays are so sophisticated that eating poppy seeds would not cause a false positive. I know that's irrelevant to your question---unless you're planning to get your bugs and varmints drug tested---but I just thought you might be interested!

Give us a little more info about what you have and what damage you're finding, and maybe we can help more.

Happy (HOT) summer,
Skybird

They are (or rather, were) oriental poppies. They only took the big buds -- there is no problem with the foliage and I haven't seen anything else eaten in my garden. We haven't seen any scat, and we live in suburbia with lots of fences, so other than raccoons, squirrels and birds are about the only wildlife we see back there.

If only the buds are disappearing are you sure you don't have some "two-footed critters" out in your garden when you're not looking (a/k/a kids!)? I don't know of anything--animal or insect--that would eat only the buds and leave the foliage alone.

Also, just in case you haven't heard this before, do you know that oriental poppies go dormant in summer when it gets hot. Since it's already HOT, I'm surprised your foliage still looks good, but don't worry about it when it starts to turn yellow and disappear. And don't try too "help" the plants by watering them more when they do go dormant. Just let them do their own thing. You will probably see more foliage growing in the fall when (IF) the temps cool again.

Good luck with your bud thief search,
Skybird

Mystery solved -- I got up this morning and found the Squirrel Bandit with my poppy foliage in his hot little hands, eating the tops off whatever remained of my poppies......

I've had the same mystery! The poppies are ready to bloom, bursting with potential, full of readiness to fulfill their full-petaled destiny, and then suddenly, mysteriously, the buds vanish, leaving only their stems behind. Until yesterday, one bloomed!! A lovely shade of pale yellow. The bloom lasted but a day. Now the flower is gone and the stem stands alone. The central portion of the flower cannot be found, but the petals are neatly arranged in a pot on the other side of the patio. My small garden is fully enclosed. No human could have done this. No insect or caterpillar. No child or cat or dog, snail, or toad. Could it have been a bird or squirrel?? Who would do such a thing?? And why?? I am relieved to know, it must be the squirrels. :)

Sorry, but CAN you eat the leaves of a poppy flower plant?
We've got them scattered over our garden, and while we're eating the lettuces and radish and swede leaves I'm looking at the big luscious poppy leaves thinking, we SHOULD be eating those aswell.
I've tasted them, don't taste bad, actually taste quite nice.
Any ideas?
I've looked around but can't find anything definitive.
BTW: our poppies are blossoming. Absolutely beautiful. Only last for one day though. AWW!
cheers
thanks
duane p

I know this is an older post, but.. Thank You blueiris24.. You have just solved the mystery of who ate the breadseed poppy heads off the plants this morning. Grrrrr - darn squirrels! Time to break out the pepper spray.

Sorry I know an old post, I live on an island where there aren’t any squirrels .... but I’ve had this? head removed with the centres eaten???

I have the same problem and i’m In Australi, so no squirrel. I think I may have a rat.

I too am in Australia (Adelaide) and have had huge problems this year with my somniferum poppies being eaten and the pattern of decimation changing.

I have been growing somniferums for years from seed collected the previous year & have never had any such problems. I thought I would share my experiences over the last 5 week period and the strategies I used & outcomes that may, or may not be helpful to others.

As I just love these poppies I was checking & photographing them morning & evening as new ones were developing & opening. I have poppies growing in four areas of the back garden, sown in succession to stagger & extend their flowering period. This area is fully fenced & there are no children.

We do have possums in the neighbourhood & we've seen rats running along our fence top, but neither is anything new, usually we loose peaches to them, despite simple mechanical deterrants. For the first time this season, we've seen earwigs in the garden. As we have a dog, we don't use any poisons in the garden.

The problem started when the first area of poppies was flowering and the spent flowers were developing into big, fat glossy seed pods that I was looking forward to harvesting when ripe to sow next year. One morning two big fat green pods were completely gone, the bare stems standing tall & straight, as if the pod had just been cut off the stem immediately underneath it. There was no evidence of the pod or any droppings on the ground. There was no damage to the rest of the poppy plants, or to nearby rose bushes, so based on this, I discounted it being a possum. No other poppy foliage had been eaten. The next morning there were a further 9 seed pods that were missing from the top of their stems. At first I thought it might be birds, but this was happening overnight. I then bagged all of the developing seed pods in nylon mesh bags (that onions are sold in here in Aus) but the seed pods continued to disappear overnight.

A motion sensitive camera set up in the area captured both possum(s) and rat(s) near to this area, but no footage of the seed pods actually being eaten. Six various mouse & rat traps were set in the garden areas, laced with peanut butter, but not one mouse or rat has been captured, although peanut butter has gone, traps have been activated & even turned upside down. Camera footage even captured a rat jumping over a trap!

I then covered all of the developing seed pods with sleeves made from nylon stockings & when I ran out of those, with sleeves fashioned with tightly woven but breathable mesh cloth kitchen wipes (eg Chux). This seemed to work, for a while.

Then the developing flower buds started to disappear overnight, sometimes the bud only taken from the top of the stem, then the complete stem and bud was taken from where the stem emerged from the plant foliage. Then the sleeved pods & stems were eaten through the stockings, sometimes the internals of the seed pods were eaten, leaving only part of their shells.

On seeing some earwigs on some of the sleeves I set an earwig trap containing olive oil & soy sauce, as described on a gardening forum, half buried in the garden. I also sprayed the poppy foliage below the sleeves & those flowering poppies that weren't sleeved with Pest Oil, and that night there did not appear to be any further losses. No earwigs were caught but the next day, during daylight hours, the entire plastic earwig trap went missing! It was sighted in a very narrow space behind a garden shed, (inaccessible to our dog), and when retrieved there were multiple holes eaten through the plastic, including a complete section in the base of the container. We attributed this to a rat.

The Pest Oil application only worked for one night, then open flowers started to disappear overnight, mostly stems and all, and one large strong plant was broken in half, which we attributed to a possum, given the damage to the plant and the proximity to the peach tree.

The culprits then started eating poppy foliage, destroying several smaller plants. Then they took to eating through the base of poppy plants close to the ground, so the plant would fall over with the sleeved pods at ground level, the sleeves being removed & the pods eaten.

And then a couple days ago when I was in the garden, in broad daylight, I saw a big rat run up the stalk of a poppy plant to the base of the long sleeved pods & was surprised that the plant did not even sway with the weight of the rat, and there was no damage to the foliage it had climbed. I haven't been able to reapply Pest Oil in recent days as we have been experiencing a heatwave.

This morning I am quite deflated that about 60 or so remaining sleeved pods have been eaten, by one of these means, including for the first time eating through the Chux sleeves, which until now had proved superior to the nylon stockings. So I am now resigned that I will have very few mature seed pods for sowing next year, so very disappointing.

My conclusions. Probably a combination of culprits, but by far the biggest problem I think is rats. Very clever, determined rats, who have obviously got a taste now for all parts of the Somniferum plant & have managed to circumnavigate all my attempts to save my poppy pods & flowers this season.

A very old post but I have never ever seen Any rodant eat Somniferum Poppies. I am loaded with squirls, rabbits and mice - They won't even go near my Poppy plant patches. My first thought was someone are taking your Poppy Tops- but if you can tell it has been mangled a bit I would say there is a worm or a bug of somekind that will eat the Buds, Flowers or the Pods. Virtually Any Insect or Rodant, Deer, or domestic animals Shy Completely away other than Mosquetos ans few flies or some very tiny and very few little bugs..? There is a certain worm or beatle depending on where you live is the culpret..! I know how hard it is to take the loss of your Somniferum Poppies for reasons like Wind Rain Snow Late and Late unexpected Frosts!!! It is Sping 2022 now and I have fought this insane Wheater with my Tazmainians This Year.! I Saved them but ain't near what they Should Be for the last week of May and into First week of June in Central Illinois, US... Good Luck.. LoRo