The Welsh Poppy is a well-known perennial plant, frequently found in gardens, damp rocky places and on mountains. The bright green plant reaches about 50cm high and its flowers (4-8cm across) are the truest, clearest yellow I know, each one with 4 over-lapping petals borne solitarily on slender, almost hairless stems. At the centre of each flower is a circle of yellow stamens. They bloom from June to August. The leaves are stalked and divided into coarsely toothed lobes. The fruit is an oval capsule with pores at the top for seed distribution. Formerly known as Meconopsis cambrica, this is a native plant which has been planted in gardens, rather than a garden escape, and it belongs to the family Papaveraceae.
My first record of this wildflower is in 1978 in Dalkey, Co Dublin and I photographed on the roadside near Old Bridge, Co Wicklow in 2008.
If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre
