Long-headed Poppy (Papaver dubium)

Long-headed Poppy (Papaver dubium), also known distastefully as Blindeyes, growing in its natural Australian environment: railway ballast. A European native, it was reported naturalised in NSW before 1859, and was first formally recorded in Victoria in 1894 at Horsham. Subsequent records are predominantly situated in a corridor paralleling the Western railway line, as well as along the commuter railways within the metropolitan, as was the case with the plants pictured here. The species is not entirely restricted to Victorian railway embankments however; just this weekend I also noted a location where it is growing in gravelly boulevard in Darebin.