Rememberance Sunday Poppy Day Editorial Photo

Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday in November, the Sunday nearest to 11 November. Remembrance Sunday sees special events and services relating to remembrance. On Remembrance Sunday, there'll be a Cenotaph Parade in Whitehall. The Cenotaph ceremony is organised annually by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with The Royal British Legion coordinating the March Past. There'll also be various concerts, church services and events in London on and around this date to mark Remembrance Day. The tribute is to remember the people of the armed forces who made sacrifices the UK. Scarlet corn poppies (popaver rhoeas) grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers. In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as World War One raged through Europe's heart. Once the conflict was over the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields. The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields.