Papaver radicatum
Arctic Poppy ( flowers, nodding buds, unripe fruit capsules).
Arctic Poppy (Papaver radicatum, formerly nudicaule also Papaver ) is a plant of the family poppy family ( Papaveraceae ). With the Gegenblättrigen saxifrage this type is the most in the north living angiospermous; both still survive at 83 ° 40'N on the Kaffeklubben Island. The island is generally considered to be the northernmost dry land in the world.
Description
The Arctic poppy is a perennial herbaceous plant with yellow latex. From a " rhizome " out it forms a relatively dense, more comprehensive basic part plant rosette of blue-green, lance- shaped three - to five -lobed and coarsely toothed hairy leaves. In most cases several, 12-20 cm high, unbranched, spreading hairy, often reddish stems it carries only a single to 5 cm large flower whose buds are spherical and nodding. The flower consists of two hairy sepals, four sulfur- yellow, greenish- yellow petals later of about 1.5 cm in length. From the ovary forms a cauldron-shaped, about 1 cm long and 0.6 cm thick pore capsule containing a large number of very small seeds. The seed dispersal is carried by the wind.
The Arctic Poppy is a real solar collector - its petals are shaped so that they capture the sun's rays and can reflect on the ovary in the flower center. Here, the flower heads turn to rotate the sun and let the beams of which are always in optimum angle of incidence. In this way it is possible the plant to increase the temperature and allow the seed maturation in no time - in the short arctic summer essential for the survival of the Art
Occurrence
Arctic poppy and its subgroups are circumpolar distribution in arctic climates, as on the coasts of Greenland and in the Arctic north eastern Canada (Canadian -Arctic Archipelago and Canadian mainland, including the north coast of the province of Quebec ), in the north of Alaska, in Iceland, in Lapland, on Svalbard on Franz Josef Land and on the northeast coast of Siberia.
Arctic poppy grows preferentially on open gravel areas.