Collection, and Commerce

The seeds of the opium poppy are sown in October in well-cultivated soil. The seeds germinate in the fall, and the seedlings may be an inch high when snow falls this protects them from freezing. In the spring, when the plants have attained the height of 6 in., the fields are cultivated and the plants thinned to stand about 2 ft apart. The poppy blossoms in April or May, and the capsules mature in June or July. Each plant bears from five to eight capsules. 

Opium contains 20 alkaloids in combination with meconic, lactic, and sulfuric acids the neutral principles are meconin and meconoiasin, besides glucose, mucilage, resin, pectin, caoutchouc, 

Other alkaloids are codamine, cryptopine, gnoscopine, hydrocotarnine, lanthopine, lauda-nine, laudanosine, meconidine, oxynarcotine, papaveramine, protopine, pseudomorphine, rhoeadine, and tritopine. Many of them occur only in traces, and some are regarded as probable derivatives of morphine. Porphyroxin is said to be a complex combination of several of the alkaloids, and not a proximate principle (Potter, 1910). 

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