Winnipeg Free Press: Praise for the poppy, paying tribute to this powerful symbol of Remembrance
November 11, 2023 —
“Poppy flowers are so interesting because of their fused carpels that form a single structure in the centre,” says Carla Zelmer, instructor and curator of the Buller Greenhouse teaching and outreach collection in the department of biological sciences, University of Manitoba.
“The stripes radiating from the top of the ovary are stigmas, each one representing a single carpel. The carpel is a structure that is unique to flowering plants. It has three parts — an enclosed ovary containing ovules and later the seeds, a style that raises up the stigma, and a stigma where the pollen is deposited. In poppies, what might have originally been many separate carpels have become fused as they co-evolved with their pollinators.”