medicinal use of the opium poppy (papaver somniferum l) has ancient history, but the isolation of morphine was not described until the early nineteenth century. morphine is the most important alkaloid of opium poppy in the last 50 years. in the morphine pathway has been reported to generate morphine in this species, codm has a crucial role as the gene coding the enzyme responsible for demethyla...

Expressing a pollen self-incompatibility gene from Papaver rhoeas (poppy) in Arabidopsis thaliana renders the latter sensitive to an exquisitely precise induced cell death response. This simple system may have wide application in biotechnology and research.

The intense color of yellow Papaver nudicaule flowers is conferred by the presence of nudicaulins, a group of alkaloids with a unique pentacyclic skeleton composed of an indole ring and a polyphenolic moiety. Petals from eight different Papaveraceae species composed of different color varieties were probed for the presence of nudicaulins. In addition to their occurrence in yellow P. nudicaule f...