Austrian poppy

Papaver alpinum, the alpine or dwarf poppy, is a small tufted perennial herb in the Papaveraceae native to the high mountains of central and southern Europe, including the Alps, Carpathians, and Pyrenees, where it grows on calcareous screes, moraines, and rocky alpine grassland from about 1800 to 3000 metres elevation. Plants form low rosettes of finely dissected, blue-green, glaucous, two- to three-pinnatifid leaves arising from a deep taproot and exuding white to pale yellow latex when bruised. Solitary flowers are borne on slender, leafless, stiffly hispid scapes 5 to 25 centimetres tall, with two caducous sepals subtending four crinkled, silky petals 1 to 3 centimetres long ranging from white through yellow and orange to red across the species complex. Numerous yellow stamens surround a sessile capsular ovary topped by a flat stigmatic disc with 4 to 8 rays. The fruit is an obovoid capsule dehiscing by apical pores.