Medium height roughly hairy plant usually branched. Flowers scarlet to pale red, 7-10 cm across with the petals overlapping, often with a black blotch at the base, anthers bluish. Flower stalks with spreading hairs. Seed capsule rounded.

Other small red Papaver species

Seed capsules rounded (less than twice as long as wide).  The flowers are very variable in colour - often bright scarlet and blotched but can be white, pink, mauvish or light red, or unblotched (as in the 'Shirley' poppy seed-strain commonly grown in gardens and often escaping). Anthers bluish-black.

Photo of seed capsules.  Not all plants can be identified from a photo of the flower

Cultivated fields, bare and waste places, field boundaries and roadsides.  Often grown in gardens and escaping.

June to October.

Annual.

Found throughout Britain, but more localised in Wales and Scotland.

Fairly common in Leicestershire and Rutland. The Flora of Leicestershire published in 1988 states that it occurred in 328 of the 617 tetrads.

In the current Checklist (Jeeves, 2011), it is listed as an Alien archaeophyte (i.e. an old introduction that first appeared in the wild in Britain before 1500) and locally frequent.