Paeonia 2023

[Leena]

P.veitchii is one of my absolute favourite peonies. These are all small plants, around 50cm tall, they have usually sidebuds, and they are very healthy plants. I have never had any kind of trouble with them (botrytis which I have in some other species peonies). They are also very fertile and produce lots of seeds.





I have been told that this plant resembles Windflower peonies, but they are sterile while this is very fertile producing lots of seeds. I ones had 'Early Windflower' but lost it to botrytis one winter.

[Leena]

This peony was grown as P.veitchii var woodwardii.




2015 I sowed P.veitchii seeds from Pilous, and they grew to be wonderful small peonies.
Ex Dege, China

[Leena]

These are ex Kandang, China.

[Leena]

This peony was sown as P.mascula ssp hellenica, which it isn't as ssp hellenica should be white, but maybe it is some other kind of P.mascula. It has lower leaflet count 12 so that would match P.mascula. Also the leaf shape is different than most of my P.dauricas. Peonies are not easy to identify, and maybe most garden grown plants are hybrids, but they can still make wonderful plants in the garden.
One of the seedlings was red.


And the other seedling is paler, and I like this one very much. 

[Leena]

Leena, lovely Paeonia. In 2023, I also planted a number of different wild Paeonia in our garden. Now wait for them to bloom.

Thank you Herman. 
Peonies are lovely plants, and worth a wait for them to grow and flower.

[Leena]

Couple more peonies from last summer.
I have a group of seed grown peonies, mother plant was P.obovata ssp willmottiae and father P.anomala.
I showed these already some years ago, but they turned out to be really nice early peonies so I will show them again when they are now bigger plants.
All other seedlings were very close to each other, only one was different with slightly semidouble flowers, and it also flowered later.




All these start to flower darker and then the flower colour fades by the end of flowering. Flower is big with dark stamens like the mother plant. They seem to be sterile. I have gotten two seeds from these in the past three years.

[Leena]

The different sister seedling to the ones above.

[Leena]

Another nice open pollinated seedlings from P.obovata ssp willmottiae from 2016. Sadly I lost the mother plant to botrytis in winter 2017. Also winter 2022 was very bad and I lost other P.obovata ssp willmottiae plants which I had grown from seeds from a kind forumist. Stangerly all these hybrids survived both those winters even though they were mostly grown in the same bed or close by, so they have inherited the hardiness of P.anomala.

Anyway, here are some more, and I don't know where the pollen came from to these plants, but they are hybrids as well because they seem to be sterile.
Also the flower of these plants fades as it ages.

[Margaret Thorne]

This peony was sown as P.mascula ssp hellenica, which it isn't as ssp hellenica should be white, but maybe it is some other kind of P.mascula. It has lower leaflet count 12 so that would match P.mascula.

Populations of Paeonia mascula subsp. hellenica are predominantly white flowered, but individuals within the population can also be pink or white with pink flushes. These were all photographed on Mt Ochi, Evia on 28th April 2023. Arne Strid's 'Atlas of the Aegean Flora' describes subspecies hellenica as: 'Stem often pinkish; leaf divisions broadly elliptical to obovate; petals white rarely pinkish'and subspecies mascula as: 'Stems usually pale green; leaf divisions elliptic; petals rather dull purplish-red'.

[Margaret Thorne]

Here are a few habitat shots from the same population of P. mascula subsp. hellenica on Mt Ochi

[Margaret Thorne]

These are Paeonia mascula subsp. mascula plants grown from seed collected on Samos (first four) and Lesvos (last one). I have seen only red flowered plants in the wild.

[Leena]

Margaret, thank you for pictures of wild P.mascula ssp hellenica. I enjoyed especially the habitat pictures.
It is good to know that they can be also pink, and I think my plants had reddish stems but I will have to check them better next summer.
Leaves in my plants seems a bit more round, but again I will have to take more pictures next summer.
It would be nice to have the real species, but on the other hand a good garden plant is always good, no matter if it is a hybrid.

Your pictures of P.mascula ssp mascula show well the leaf shape.
Interesting how the white flowering plant from Lesvos has glabrous carpels and the pink one has tomentose carpels.
The dark foliage and white flowers look amazing, really beautiful.

[ruweiss]

Leena, enormous collection, thank you for showing. I did not know about so many species and varieties
of wild peonies. Simply beautiful

[Leena]

Leena, enormous collection, thank you for showing. I did not know about so many species and varieties
of wild peonies. Simply beautiful

Thank you Rudi.
All except one are grown from seeds, many from seed ex.