Buy dried flowers, dried poppies & poppy seeds.

Blue poppy seed

Poppy seed are tiny nutty-tasting, blue-gray seeds inside capsules of the Papaver family. Since all the types of poppies give these kind of seeds, including the Papaver somniferum or opium poppy (from which opium and other derivates can be extracted), there is a misconception that all poppy seeds have narcotic substances. In fact, blue poppy seeds have been used for centuries for their medicinal value. Greeks used them and were the ones who introduced poppy seeds as medicine Be aware that unripe poppy seeds could contain narcotic substances but no the ripe ones.

Seeds should be harvested when ripe. It is illegal to do so when they are unripe for the situation explained above. You can tell when the seed capsule is ripe when it darkens in color and the valves of the capsule begin to split apart. You can shake the capsule in order to obtain the seeds. When the seeds are collected they must be placed in a dry place inside a paper bag, and in refrigeration in order to keep them fresh. Depending on the kind of poppy or Meconopsis is the size of the seed the plant will give. This can be more noticeable with hybrids in Meconopsis, in which M. Lingholm gives the biggest seeds.

Blue poppy seeds are kidney-shaped and have a sweet nutty-flavor. For this reason these seeds have been used for centuries in bakery goods. They are used to flavor breads, rolls, muffins, cookies, cakes, biscuits, etc. The seeds contain very high oil concentration, from 44 to 50 percent fixed oil, and it is used for baking mainly. But it is also used by artists as a drying oil. Blue seeds are used more in Europe.

Today Holland and Canada are the main producers of blue poppy seed, and Holland is famous for having the "A-1" qualification on their seeds (A-1 is the highest quality grade). Australia also produces seed but it's quality is inferior. Blue poppy seed is hard to find in your local store because of the close watch that governments keep in the cultivation of these plants.

Blue poppy seeds are also used for the propagation of the species. There is foundation called Seed Exchange where they care a lot about the propagation of Meconopsis throughout the world .

If you don't use the seeds for baking and you only want them to grow more plants from them it is recommended that you keep them in refrigeration for 4 weeks to get better results. Also you must be careful where you plant the seeds because they need a temperature below 18° C to grow. You can take advantage of the last 3 months of the year to plant them.