My poppies were, or became, felonious; another gardener's might or might not be. The legality of growing opium poppies (whose seeds are sold under many names, including the breadseed poppy, Papaver paeoniflorum, and, most significantly, Papaver somniferum) is a tangled issue, turning on questions of nomenclature and epistemology that it took me the better part of the summer to sort out. But before I try to explain, let me offer a friendly warning to any gardeners who might wish to continue growing this spectacular annual: the less you know about it, the better off you are, in legal if not horticultural terms. Because whether or not the opium poppies in your garden are illicit depends not on what you do, or even intend to do, with them but very simply on what you know about them. Hence my warning: if you have any desire to grow opium poppies, you would be wise to stop reading right now.

It's against the law to grow opium poppies in the United States, although enforcement has been inconsistent in the case of small-time gardeners who grow them as ornamental flowers. According to the Controlled Substances Act, every part of the opium poppy except the seed is illegal, including the seed pods, but some companies do import dried seed pods for decorative purposes

>Anyway, I read an article in Harper's last year about how the writer (one
>of the contributing editors? - I don't recall exactly) decided to grow
>some and then found himself in the legal grey zone, which he tried to come
>to some understanding about.  What he found was that yes indeed it is
>illegal, a federal offense no less, to be growing opium poppies if you
>were aware of what they actually were.  If the poppies were scored for
>collecting opium that would be a dead giveaway to the authorities of
>course, but otherwise there was some onus on the law's part (at least
>in the courts) to prove that you knew you were growing opium poppies.
>So, if a stranger asks a `merican what those lovely flowers are then
>saying "poppies" (which could easily be any number of species) should
>keep them in the clear.  At least this was the writer's take on it,
>and he admitted that it wasn't absolutely certain as there was so much
>official confusion on the subject.  Of course this doens't stop over
>zealous local law officers from stomping through a US garden and ripping
>them out.  There isn't much recourse for the gardener at that point.

Section 841 of the act reads, "[I]t shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally . . . to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense" opium poppies. The definition of "manufacturing" includes propagating--i.e., growing. Three things struck me as noteworthy about the language of the statute. The first was that it goes out of its way to state that opium poppy seeds are, in fact, legal, presumably because of their legitimate culinary uses. There seems to be a chicken-and-egg paradox here, however, in which illegal poppy plants produce legal poppy seeds from which grow illegal poppy plants.

The second thing that struck me about the statute's language was the fact that, in order for growing opium poppies to be a crime, it must be done "knowingly or intentionally." Opium poppies are commonly sold under more than one botanical name, only one of which--Papaver somniferum--is specifically mentioned in the law, so it is entirely possible that a gardener could be growing opium poppies without knowing it. There would therefore appear to be an "innocent gardener" defense. Not that it would do me any good: at least some of the poppies I'd planted had been clearly labeled Papaver somniferum, a fact that I have--perhaps foolishly--confessed in these very pages to knowing. The third thing that struck me was the most stunning of all: the penalty for knowingly growing Papaver somniferum is a prison term of five to twenty years and a maximum fine of $1 million.