adminrizu:

So many posts going into such details over why the poppy was chosen. Many of them beautiful and tear-jerking, but also wrong.

The colour red wasn’t chosen to signify anything, it’s the natural colour of the flower.

Poppies were chosen because they grew in such numbers on the battlefields during and after WW1 ended. These flowers on the battlefield were the inspiration for the poem “In Flanders Fields”

Selling them started as a way to fundraise to help those who had lived find jobs and survive after the war. The original were made of silk, and not the paper/felt that many are sold as today.

While the majority of people wear their poppy on their chest, there is no right or wrong way to wear a poppy.

As the Royal British Legion says: “We only ask you to wear it with pride.”

Sources:

https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/remembrance/how-we-remember/the-story-of-the-poppy/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/15492228

Wait what… people don’t know that the Remembrance Day Poppy is naturally red???

It’s even an entirely distinct species of poppy separate from other poppies; Papaver rhoeas, a European annual wildflower that proliferates on disturbed land/soil. You can even grow it with other poppy species side by side in the gardenscape. It’s funny that there are people who know of the day but not of the flower that is worn for said day.