Milk Poppy

The Milk Poppy is a flowering plant found in gardens across Creation, and wild as well, most commonly in the open meadows and fields of the coastal and Eastern Threshold. It's flower is large and bright red, with a round seed pod.

In addition to popularity as a decorative plant, the Milk Poppy is harvested for culinary purposes, poppy seeds being used in all manner of baked goods (most common in the North), ground to produce a thickener for sauces (a tradition in the Southeast), or used to produce poppyseed oil.

The seed pods of the Milk Poppy are also used in the production of drugs and medicines, including Opium and Heroin. The pods are cut, and exude a white milky liquid (the 'milk' which gives the poppy its name) which is carefully harvested and prepared accordig to appropriate alchemical recipies for the drug being sought.

Milk poppies are illegal on the Blessed Isle, and peasants are expected to destroy them when encountered. Instead, other poppies without utility for drug production (and the culinary uses that go hand-in-hand with it) such as the Sun Poppy were sought. Special licenses were granted by the Thousand Scales for use of the Milk Poppy as a decorative plant in gardens, almost all to Dragonblooded of House Cynis who could justify their applications with reference to their Exalted status and dominant House position the Realm drug trade. Since the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress, these licenses have been increasingly abused to establish plantations of milk poppies on the Blessed Isle.