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Interesting that you should post that image today Janis. At yesterday's South West AGS Show a chap came into the member's plant sale with a few pots in a box that he asked to be put on the sales table in case anyone was interested in them for free. Amongst them were two Paeonia seedlings labelled as follows:-"Paeonia Sp. Nova Iran, Talysh, 2000m, JJA 19199" I put £5 in the till and brought one pot home with me. With the pots was a coloured photograph of a yellowish Paeony which one chap on the plant stall said might be Molly the Witch!Last night I had a look through the Jim Archibald papers on the SRGC Main Site and couldn't find any reference to Talysh, Iran and I also looked quickly through the JJA Seed Lists and could not find a reference to "19199" and looked to Maggi to see if she might be able to point me in the right direction. Maggi came up with the following:-747.961 : #PAEONIA TOMENTOSA Azerbaijan. (A very little-known species. Plants from seed collected in the Iranian Talysh range, which runs from SE Azerbaijan on into Iran, in the 1960's (as P. wittmanniana) were compact with white flowers & most distinct. We saw yellow-flowered ones in another Iranian Talysh locality recently. This seed is from up towards Armenia, in the main body of the Caucasus, in NE Azerbaijan. Our own seedlings are as yet unflowered.)For the sake of the record I'll try to post an image of my plant tomorrow although it looks no different to the images Janis has posted.Did you collect the seed from which your plants were grown Janis?
Matt - thank you so much for that information about the Iranian peonies and David Millward's fascinating article. All a lot clearer now! Some wonderful pictures in nature.
Paeonia tenuifolia subsp. lithophila
The huge plant at Kew in the Order Beds labelled as P. emodi is in fact one of the Windflower (it comes from Stern's garden at Highdown)...and I suspect that the big plant in Cambridge BG is also from Highdown (Gail...have you got pics of it?).M.
The main feature of true P. emodi is the single carpel.