Abstract: The illegal Papaver somniferum seeds are closely related to drug crimes and have serious social harm.Scientific identification of the attribute and vitality of P. somniferum seeds involved in the case has importantly judicial practice value.To investigate the micromorphological characteristics of P. somniferum seeds and the vigor of P. somniferum seeds in different years, the structure characteristics of seed coat, germination rate, germination potential and germination index of 8 P. somniferum seeds in different years were studied in this paper.The results showed as follows 1) compared with the corn poppy possessed similar morphology, the seed coat color of P. somniferum seeds was brown, with larger size, and the ornamentation were mostly pentagonal or hexagonal and the overall shape was renal and relatively stable 2) the germination rate of P. somniferum seeds was above 90% in recent three years, and the germination rate decreased year by year in other years 3) The germination potential and germination index of P. somniferum seeds sent for inspection in different years also showed a decreasing trend with the increase of the number of years 4) the results of Pearson correlation coefficient test showed that there were significant positive correlations among germination potential, germination index and germination percentage.The results showed that the longer the storage years, the longer the initial germination time and the lower the vigor of P. somniferum seeds.In short, the viability testing period of P. somniferum seeds involved should be appropriately extended to avoid missing detection.