Birth flower for May 3
Poppy
Meaning: Remembrance
Poppies wear two faces. In World War I, Canadian doctor John McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" about red poppies blooming among soldiers' graves, and the poppy became the Commonwealth's flower of remembrance. Its cousin, the opium poppy, gave the world morphine, a vital painkiller, and also sparked the Opium Wars. In Chinese, the corn poppy is called "Lady Yu," after a legendary consort said to have bloomed again as this flower.