Wild about Poppy!

All the way from an English Garden in Penrith I bring you the Wild Poppie or also known as Corn Rose, Blindybuff, Prickly Poppy, Bloodroot are all part of the Poppy family, (Papaveraceae.)

It is said that if you hold a poppy to your eyes it will blind you.  That is why in Mid- Yorkshire the wild poppy is called blindybuff.

Culpeper Virtues of the Wild Poppie. The herb is Lunar, and of the juice of it is made opium; only for lucre of money they cheat you, and tell you it is a kind of tear, or some such like thing, that drops from Poppies when they weep, and that is somewhere beyond the seas, I know not where beyond the Moon. The garden Poppy heads with seeds made into a syrup, is frequently, and to good effect used to procure rest, and sleep, in the sick and weak, and to stay catarrhs and defluxions of thin rheums from the head into the stomach and lungs, causing a continual cough, the fore runner of a consumption; it helps also hoarseness of the throat, and when one have lost their voice, which the oil of the seed doth likewise. The black seed boiled in wine, and drank, is said also to dry the flux of the belly, and women's courses. The empty shells, or poppy heads, are usually boiled in water, and given to procure rest and sleep: so doth the leaves in the same manner; as also if the head and temples be bathed with the decoction warm, or with the oil of the poppies, the green leaves or heads bruised, and applied with a little vinegar, or made into a poultice with barley meal or hog's grease, cools and tempers all inflammations; as also the disease called St. Anthony's fire.

Wild poppies are said to invoke faery into your dreams. Make a dream pillow of fresh wild poppies to entice the fae to your forty-winks.

To make a faery dream pillow

Cut out two squares of soft fabric approximately 6 inches square
Velvet,velveteen or satin are preferred,
Sew around three sides of the squares with
white or silver thread. Mix in a bowl:

Rose Petals (two parts)
Primroses (one part)
Bay leaves, fresh (one part)
Lavender (one part )
Wild Poppies (two parts)

Turn the pillow inside out so that the seams don't show, stuff the pillow
with your herb mixture. Sew up the end so that the herbs stay in the pillow.
You can then decorate the pillow if you want with lace, silk, or embroider
with designs, etc. Take this pillow to bed with you at night and put it
under your pillow. This not only smells great but will help you to have
dreams of the fey. NOTE: After six months these pillows may lose their
"fresh" scent. You can reuse them by emptying out the old contents and
refilling them with new herbs