COTTAGE-GARDEN POPPIES FALL VICTIM TO THE WAR ON DRUGS

In the new mail-order catalogue from British seed and plant merchant
Thompson & Morgan, among this season's best and brightest of plants,
there's a poppy called Pink Dawn.

But don't bother trying to order it, or seeds of any other Papaver
somniferum, from the company. Thompson & Morgan has stopped selling
seeds of opium poppies to its U.S. customers.

Consider this the latest skirmish in the opium poppy war, in which
U.S. gardeners who grow these cottage-garden favorites are committing
a federal crime.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, it is illegal
to grow or possess any part of opium poppy plants except the seeds,
which are available through other mail-order catalogues and in the
spice aisle of grocery stores.

Gardeners have long admired this annual for its beautiful flowers and
ability to self-sow, so new poppy plants grow each year.

Federal agents are more concerned about the seed head, or capsule, of
the opium poppy, which has the milky sap that is the source of heroin.

The seed heads of other varieties of poppies can't be used to make
drugs, so it's okay to grow those.

The DEA has asked seed companies to voluntarily stop selling opium
poppies for garden or culinary use "before this situation adds to the
drug abuse epidemic," according to a 1995 letter.

A spokeswoman says that although the DEA does not specifically target
poppy plants in home gardens, "if we get a tip or if we are making a
case and poppy plants are also found, we pursue" the matter.

But many gardeners who grow opium poppies may not even know they are
breaking the law.

"People share the seeds, and none of them was aware that they're opium
poppies," says one Oakland County, Mich., gardener who, like others
interviewed who grow opium poppies, asked to remain anonymous.

In response to the DEA, Shepherd's Garden Seeds limits sales to three
seed packets of opium poppies per customer.

Shepherd Ogden, owner of Cook's Garden, another popular mail-order
firm, says he considers the whole thing to be ridiculous.

In a phone interview, Ogden said anyone growing opium poppies for
drugs would have to plant huge tracts of land, not order a couple of
seed packets.

It would be a better use of DEA resources to go after those major
growers rather "than hassling home gardeners who are planting a few
here and there," he says.

Still, the prospect of getting penalized for growing the illegal plant
persuaded Michael Pollan, a Connecticut writer, to stop growing opium
poppies. He wrote about how he'd grown some in his own garden in
Harper's magazine.

"I love them. I think they're great plants to grow as an annual, not
as a drug. I really wish I could grow them," Pollan said recently.
When his article was published in 1997, "nothing happened to me," he
says, "but I became very nervous about it."

Thompson & Morgan, established in 1855, continues to sell opium poppy
seeds in England. The seed company changed its policy here after a
U.S. customs agent questioned its incoming shipment last summer and
consulted the DEA.

The company withdrew the seeds in the United States because "if our
records were seized by the DEA, our customers could be jeopardized,"
said Susan Jellinek, a horticulturist at the company's U.S.
headquarters in New Jersey. "It's just not the kind of thing you want
to risk."

Angry customers have observed that if they wanted to get the seeds,
all they'd have to do is go to the supermarket. Opium poppy seeds,
which are edible, are also widely used on breads and bagels and in
cakes.

A number of mail-order catalogues that offer opium poppy seeds say
nothing about the federal ban on growing the plant. Most gardening
books don't mention it either. Opium poppies and the controversies
around them, however, get extensive treatment on the Web site
www.poppies.org.

Opium poppies have been grown at least since 2000 B.C., according to
Christopher Grey-Wilson, author of "Poppies: A Guide to the Poppy Family in the
Wild and in Cultivation" (Timber Press, $ 37.95). Opium was widely used as a
narcotic to ease pain and induce sleep. Its addictive effect was not recognized
in the West until after 1900, according to Grey-Wilson.

One suburban Detroit resident whose garden includes opium poppies says
she inherited the plants, probably sown decades ago by a previous
owner. When the opium poppies bloom, they are "gorgeous," she says.

"People stop and say, 'Wow!' And I chuckle, because I know what they
are."