Black Poppy.
Papaver nigrum.
Also see: The White Poppy. - Black Poppy. - Red Poppy.
A tall and fine plant, but not so elegant as the former. It is a yard high. The stalk is round, upright, firm, and smooth, and toward the top divides into some branches. The leaves are long and broad, of a bluish green colour, and deeply and irregularly cut in at the edges. The flowers are large and single: they are of a dead purple colour, with a black bottom. The heads or seed-vessels are round, and of the bigness of a walnut. The seed is black.
A syrup of the heads of this poppy is a stronger sudorific than the common diacodium, but it is not used. The gentleness of that medicine is its merit: when something more powerful is used, it is better to have recourse to opium, or laudanum.
