Hélas! For French wheat farmers the poppy is a weed, but for the summer wayfarer an inspiration. Wild poppies once flourished sprouting up heavily among cereal plants in fields of grain, but the use of herbicides in intensive wheat production has largely eradicated them from the cultivated tracts, relegating them to uncultivated edges of planted fields, fallows, and roadsides.
Poppies are still present in this wheat field in Picardie, but are sparse in comparison with harvests from days gone by.
Vocabulary
un coquelicot: a poppy
une mauvaise herbe: a weed
une plante messicole: an annual plant which grows in fields of cereals
la moisson: harvest
les terres arables: farmlands (also les terres cultivables, les terres agricoles)
hélas: alas
©2016 P.B. Lecron
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