BIODIVERSITY OF PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM L. (OPIUM POPPY)

Opium poppy is one of the ancestral domesticated plants for humans.
It is widely cultivated from the subtropical to the alpine regions, from Ethiopia to Scandinavia, Burma, Argentina and Tasmania, but it can escape from cultivation.
Its wild subspecies setigerum has a natural area from Madeira to Cyprus, and around the Mediterranean sea.

The species is of presumably triploid nature resulting in high genetic plasticity by the huge cultivation area, as well as its use as a medicinal, food, or ornamental plant.

Poppy is differentiated in karyological (2n = 22, 44), morphological (shape and colour of petals, shape and size of capsules, colour of seeds etc.), physiological (length of life cycle, photoperiodic induction) and biosynthetic (main alkaloids, rate of seed oil) characters.

This biodiversity must be reflected in the microsystematics of the species on behalf of horticulturalists, to select new cultivars on the basis of this giant genetical background, and to draw attention to the danger of the loss of this variability if not preserved in gene-banks.

Internat. Symposium on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

P. Tetenyi

Origin, distribution, alkaloids, microsystematics, selection, preservation

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1995.390.27