2012 $2 Remembrance Day 'Red Poppy' PNC

Since the devastating years of the Great War, the red poppy (Papaver rhoeas) has become a vivid and resonant symbol for remembrance. This humble plant thrives in disturbed soils, and so it flowered in spring across the war-ravaged landscape of the Western Front. While the flourishing of a bloom suggests renewal of life, for soldiers the vermilion-red petals symbolised the blood of fellow soldiers spilt on the Western Front, a symbol popularised by the poem “In Flanders Fields”.