sleep flower

English

Opium poppies sprouting in Turkey

Alternative forms

• sleep-flower

Noun

sleep flower (plural sleep flowers)

1. (literary, poetic) A poppy, particularly the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, whose extract was traditionally used as a sleep aid.
   • 1900, Lilian Bell, As Seen By Me‎^[1]:

     In the cracks of the marble floors, in the crannies of the walls, springing from beneath the broken statue, voiceless yet persistent, grow scarlet poppies — the sleep flowers of the world, yielding to this yellowing Temple of Mysteries the quieting influence of their presence.

   • before 1908, Francis Thompson, The Poppy‎^[2] (poem):

     The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,
     Heavy with dreams, as that with bread:
     The goodly grain and the sun-flush'd sleeper
     The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.

   • 1909 September 16, Ethel Young, “Amore's Garden of Sleep”, in Presbyterian Banner‎^[3], volume 96, Presbyterian Banner Publishing Company:

     There were poppies everywhere — red and white and yellow, in groups and clusters, hanging their drowsy heads in the noonday sun which still seemed robbed of half its power here.
     "Sleep-flowers, you know," said Mary, who was an authority on these matters.

   • 1918, Katherine Taylor Craig, The Fabric of Dreams‎^[4], page 137:

     The Digger tribe of Indians in California, whose nomad traditions have long since been seared out of existence by the white man's scorn, have held to the legend of the tiny crimson poppies that grow on the edge of the desert in the spring. They are called "sleep flowers" and the story goes that he who lies among them for even a little while will be visited forevermore by a spirit who will drag him each night to that same spot.

   • 1922, John Gould Fletcher, Preludes and Symphonies‎^[5] (poem), Poppies of the Red Year, page 98:

     It was not for a sacred cause,
     Nor for faith, nor for new generations,
     That unburied we roll and float
     Beneath this flaming tumult of drunken sleep-flowers.

   • 1924, Eric Chilman, “Bird and Flower”, in The Windsor Magazine‎^[6], volume 60 (poem):

     Strange fellowship of Nature! I had snared
     On that wold's height a memory to keep
     Of sleep-flowers and an ever-chanting bird—
     Poppies by Lethe known, a lark's song heard—
     The lord of waking and the lords of sleep.

2. (fantasy) Any flower whose consumption, in whole or in part, causes the consumer to fall asleep.
   • 1875, “The Sleep Seed”, in The Peep-show: for Little Readers‎^[7], Oxford University:

     After the lazy lover had sown the sleep seed all over the grounds, he went away. […] All along the galleries it grew and grew, and in a few days the air of the place was heavy with the scent of the pale-coloured sleep-flowers. Then the whole world of the palace began to drowse. […] And the pale sleep-flowers bloomed thicker and thicker, and the air grew heavier and heavier, and at last everybody was lapped in sleep.

   • 1995, Squaresoft, Seiken Densetsu 3, SNES:

     […] The wind will shift and the way will open. […] Then, go back to the garden with the sleep flowers. Use Jinn's power to control the wind, and spread the sleep pollen into Rolante castle.