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Reader question: Please explain this sentence, particularly “tall poppy”: It’s a “tall poppy” culture: you stick your head above the crowd and you get it whacked off. My comments: In China, we say the bird that sticks its head out gets shot. Or similarly, we say the nail that raises its head above the even surface of the table always gets hammered down. Metaphorically, that means that those that appear to be different and better, especially better than the rest of us attract unwanted attention in forms of jealousy and criticism, if not anything worse. The question is, what have poppies got to do with it? That is because in ancient Rome, one of the kings really did chop down the taller poppies in his garden to send out the exact same message: get rid of the more prominent members of society and stability is ensured. This, from Wikipedia: The specific reference to poppies occurs in Livy’s account of the tyrannical Roman King, Tarquin the Proud. He is said to have received a messenger from his son Sextus Tarquinius asking what he should do next in Gabii, since he had become all-powerful there. Rather than answering the messenger verbally, Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick, and symbolically swept it across his garden, thus cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies that were growing there. The messenger, tired of waiting for an answer, returned to Gabii and told Sextus what he had seen. Sextus realised that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, which he then did. | 
