Beautiful to look at, but the plant should not grow in your garden.
Because opium poppy is prohibited under the Narcotics Act.
Munich - poisonous plant of the year - the opium poppy was chosen for this in 2021.
The plant is a food plant, the cultivation and use of which are strictly regulated by law.
Because not only the small black grains, which can be found on bread or as a delicious filling for cakes, are obtained from opium poppy, but also drugs.
The opium poppy is one of the oldest cultivated plants.
From June to August, four white to violet, rarely red petals can be admired on its slender and hairy flower stalk, according to the Agricultural Industry Association (IVA).
The spherical capsule fruits contain hundreds of kidney-shaped, hard seeds.
The seeds are the only part of the plant that is not poisonous.
Opium poppy: manufacture of medicine and drugs
The opium poppy contains a milky sap in its seed capsules, which is necessary both for the production of medicine and for the production of intoxicants.
The healing properties of the plant have been valued since ancient times.
Various alkaloids can be found in the milky sap, of which morphine is probably the best known, according to the IVA.
Morphine is still one of the strongest painkillers, which, due to its potential for addiction, requires a prescription and can only be administered under medical supervision.
But in addition to this medical achievement, raw opium is also obtained from the dried milky juice of the opium poppy.
This serves as the basis for the production of drugs such as smoking opium or heroin.
Heroin is one of the most dangerous drugs.
However, drugs that are more dangerous than heroin are currently circulating: new psychoactive substances.
Opium poppies in your own garden: threaten fines and imprisonment
But what about the food poppy seeds?
This poppy seed is also obtained from the opium poppy plant.
However, low-morphine varieties are used in order to obtain poppy seeds for the baking industry or as oil seeds.
But be careful: you should not grow the opium poppy in your garden.
Possession of opium poppy plants and the alkaloids they contain is prohibited by the Narcotics Act (BtMG).
A violation can be punished with up to five years imprisonment or a fine.
If you still want to grow the plants, you need a special permit from the Federal Opium Agency.
However, this is only possible for specially low-opium varieties.
Alternatives to the opium poppy
If you still want to cultivate the beautiful flowers in your garden, there are legal alternatives such as the corn poppy.
The alkaloid content in the sap of the poppy is comparatively low.
He also lacks the morphine contained in the opium poppy.
Nevertheless, the plant parts of the poppy, apart from the seeds, are slightly poisonous.
Another alternative is Iceland poppy.
Blue poppy is a special but also high-maintenance pseudo-poppy variant, as
reported by 24garten.de
*.
(jsch) - *Merkur.de and 24garten.de are offered by IPPEN.MEDIA.
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