I finally dug some of the peonies that had a tough time coping with the extremely wet Winter and Spring last season. Disappointing results to be fair. Whilst losses are everywhere, the species are a negative outlier still. Some are completely gone, the label around the roots which was planted with them is at times all that remains, with some…Read More

Several species peonies seem to have difficulty with the wet Winter/Spring. Resulting in quite a few losses. Sometimes I have several plants of species, most often when I receive a dozen seeds and I get quite good germination. Often it can be seen that some plants within the same species are better than others at withstanding our local climate,…Read More

I don’t have much experience growing Paeonia obovata and P. japonica plants, they tend not to grow very well here for some reason. These are some plants grown from seeds, so perhaps not all ‘true’ (the only flowering one was a ‘pink’ P. japonica, see last picture), but there are some 5 different ones of each species and within each species they…Read More

Paeonia tenuifolia. From Serbia, wild collected seeds.

Paeonia arietina Northern Glory. I am unsure whether it is a ‘pure’ selection as it never sets seeds and I never got any results from its pollen, so I’d rather think it is a hybrid (and I’ve seen images of the supposedly same cultivar that cannot be the same, so there are others being sold under the same name). I have another P. arietina, which…Read More

Paeonia emodi. Easy grower, but also easily damaged by poor weather. The ones growing outside look terrible, with lots of damaged leaflets and flowers. I have one plant growing in a sheltered position, that one is looking great and here are some images of it.

Paeonia officinalis ssp microcarpa (also known as Paeonia humilis). Growing in Portugal/Spain and South-West France. Not a fast increaser here, only one stem, but it does show the characteristics of the species with rather narrow leaflets and indumentum on the stems and petioles. The subspecies microcarpa differs by having more segmented leaflets…Read More

Some improvements to the SPIN plants database. You can now sort them in several ways (by species name, but also most recent ones, those with images first, by origin…). Or you can filter them (the difference with sorting is that the ones not ticking the boxes are not listed anymore). And you can search within these plants for whatever you like…Read More

A seedling flowering for the first time. Should have been P. japonica. Clearly it isn’t. The leaflets have the correct shape, but a reddish pink flower isn’t and P. obovata it is neither as the carpels are tomentose. I quite like the white flare in the petals, it gives a conspicuous contrast.

P. morisii (P. corsica) from Sardinia.

Paeonia coriacea.

The new database of SPIN plants is ready I think. I’ve been adding the plants in the old list to the new one, although there’s no real automatic way to do that and I have to do this manually. It may take a little more time to add the last ones of them. But in ways of functionality I think it is more or less finished. I would appreciate any…Read More

For Uwe @manolito some images of roots of P. macrophylla. From North Eastern Turkey, wild plants. As you can see: carrot shaped roots, (sometimes very) long and rather slender. Images from Cemal Sandalli, Turkish scientist, working on a paper describing this species in more detail. Publication forthcoming.

P. macrophylla from North Eastern Turkey. A research project is going on there to classify and describe the peonies in that region. These are some images from plants growing there in nature. All plants in all populations visited so far have glabrous carpels, thus they are all P. macrophylla. Otherwise not much can be concluded yet, the research is…Read More

This flowered some time ago, although one of the later flowering species always here. P. arietina, obtained as a division from Janis Ruksans. P. arietina has either finer, somewhat more divided leaflets or wider, less divided leaflets depending on the geographical location, this one clearly has the wider ones. Not shown here is that P. arietina…Read More

P. emodi flowers well

This plant is issued from seeds received from SRGC under the name of P. emodi which is obviously not. It could either be a hybrid (maybe between mlokosewitschii and caucasica) or something else.

P. wendelboi flowered on the 29th of April for the first time.

Paeonia mascula ssp. bodurii

Paeonia mascula ssp. mascula from south of France

Paeonia obovata subsp. obovata (P. japonica)

Paeonia obovata Alba flowers for the first time

This year some of my peonies flowers/flowered for the first time.
Paeonia kesrouanensis

Almost there, the first one to flower here (perhaps P. clusii would be earlier, but that one didn’t survive again): P. kesrouanensis. Blooms well before the leaflets are fully developed, I suppose in very cold weather (or high up the mountains in deeper shade) it may postpone this blooming somewhat until the leaflets are more mature. I did have a…Read More

A bit behind schedule with asking the people growing plants to collect seeds this Spring for the ones requesting them. But we still have some time, peonies are only slowly starting to grow. In the meantime: here are some images of P. mascula ssp mascula from Turkey, a plant I grew but which probably died during Summer (it disappeared, then some…Read More

Next to our daily work we have two things we’d like to do soon on this site. First one is to compile a new list of growers of species plants and compare those to the ones that have been requested. Then we can see what is possible or not. One question to ask there is whether it would be wise to send directly from the supplier to the receiver or…Read More

Root shapes from some well-grown species.
1. P. daurica ssp wittmanniana
2. P. mascula ssp bodurii
3. P. daurica ssp velebitensis
4. P. morisii