Californian poppies

When World War II had finished, a significant interest (and availability) of medicinal herbal products started, a healthy option of functional foods and alternative medicines were desired, due to concerns about the possible side effects of some synthetic drugs had revived the use of medicinal herbs. In Recent times, there has been a tremendous surge of interest in medicinal plants or herbs, and their products are now multibillion dollar industries in the United States, Canada and great extents of Europe.

The wide use of medicinal plants and herbs for health reasons started centuries of years ago and it is still well practiced as an alternative medicine in such countries as China, Egypt, India, and other wrong called third world countries. Over decades and decades, the use of medicinal plants and herbs has become an important part of daily life in western world countries altthough has been significant progress in modern medicine (pharmaceutical) and botanical scientific research.

Poppy has two main families and both are used in the health area, but, there is a significant difference. The family known as californian poppies is legal, easy to find, and it has not side effects from its use, in fact has benefical effects on individuals that uses them; on the other hand, there is the papaver somniferum family, this one is illegal, hard and risky to find, ant it has serious back side effects when it is not used properly (can cause serious dependency), and a single overdose of this kind of poppy can kill the individual, most of the times from cardiac arrest.

Which plants are the californian poppies family?, they are usually named by scientifics or researchers, let’s make a brief list of this plants: Eschscholtzia californica ssp californica, Eschscholtzia parishii, Eschscholtzia californica ssp mexican, Eschscholtzia minutiflora ssp covillei, Eschscholtzia hypecoides, just to name a few plants.

We will focus our attention in the most common and widespread species of the “california poppies”, the Eschscholzia california Cham.

Its scientific name is Eschscholzia california Cham. and its common name is california poppy. Among its major constituents are: Protopine, cryptopine, chelidonine, flavonge glycoside. It is not toxic, so anybody can use it in great quantities without risk or fear. It is widely used in minor health problems such as pain reliever (muscle pain and shivers in flus), as a sedative for headaches and insomnia. It is used in teas, tinctures and infusions, even as a cosmetic by Indian Native Americans!.

Californian poppies seeds are easy to cultivate and grow because they require small places (around 30 to 40 centimeters), when flowering the whole plant can be cut by harvesters. This plant has only a few conditions to keep in mind: Californian poppies seeds need well-drained marginal soil, being protected by its major diseases (collar rot, gray-mold blight, powdery mildew), pathogen (alternaria spp., botrytis cinerea Pers. Ex. Fr., erysiphe polygoni DC.) and kept away from insects like root-knot nematodes.