Common poppy
The plant that proves nectar and pollen have to be rated separately. The common poppy produces no nectar whatsoever — not a trace — and offers instead an enormous quantity of pollen, which bees collect avidly. A field of poppies is a protein source and not a sugar source, and no other common plant makes that distinction so absolutely.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- None
- Pollen
- Very high
- As a honey crop
- Not a honey source
- Which bees, and why
- Bees arrive early in the morning and work the anthers directly, often rolling in them, and leave carrying enormous blue-grey pollen loads. Some solitary bees also cut poppy petals to line their nests — the poppy mason bee, Osmia papaveris, builds cells lined with red petal fragments.
Pollen entirely exposed on a broad open flower, accessible to every bee. There is no nectar to be accessible or otherwise.
- Worth knowing
- The clearest case on the site for rating nectar and pollen separately. A single 'bee friendly' score would either overstate the poppy or understate it, and both would be wrong.
Flowering
- In flower
- May to August (northern hemisphere)
Each flower lasts only a day or two, but a stand flowers in succession over months.
- When nectar flows
- None at all. This is not a low rating or an approximation — Papaver rhoeas has no nectaries and secretes no nectar, and every visit a bee makes to it is for pollen.
- Year-to-year variation
- Pollen supply is reliable wherever the seed bank is disturbed. Never a honey source under any circumstances.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Full sun and disturbed, freely drained soil. Seed can persist in the ground for decades and germinates when it is turned.
- Size
- 30-70 cm.
- Native range
- Europe, North Africa and western Asia, spread as an arable weed with cereal agriculture.
- Suits
- Meadow or wildflower area, Small gardens, Large gardens, Farm scale
- Sow on freshly disturbed bare soil in autumn or early spring. It needs the disturbance and will not establish in closed turf.
- Do not plant it as a sole pollinator planting. A garden of poppies would supply protein and no carbohydrate at all.
- Its association with disturbed ground is why it appeared across the churned battlefields of the First World War, and why it carries the meaning it does.
What it looks like
A hairy annual with dissected leaves and large scarlet four-petalled flowers, usually with a black basal blotch, surrounding a dense ring of blue-black anthers and a flat-topped capsule.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this plant
- Pollen plants explainedPollen is protein and it is what bee larvae are made of. A garden with abundant nectar and no pollen supports adult bees and produces no new ones.
- How bees find flowersBees see ultraviolet, cannot see red, detect a flower's electric field and learn scent faster than almost any other insect. Flowers, for their part, have spent a hundred million years advertising to them.
- Plants that attract honey bees specificallyHoney bees have short tongues and work in large numbers, which means they want different plants from bumblebees. Half the flowers sold as bee-friendly are out of their reach entirely.
- Specialist bees and the plants they cannot do withoutA large minority of bee species collect pollen from one plant genus and will starve rather than switch. For them a flowery garden is not forage — it is scenery around the one thing they need.
- Plants for solitary beesNine bee species in ten are solitary. They are small, short-tongued, short-lived and often tied to particular plants — which makes open shallow flowers, a long season and untidy ground more useful to them than a border of showy perennials.
Tools for planning planting
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?