The person posting the images of wild P. tomentosa on instagram surely has an interesting page with many botanical treasures of Iran. I was wondering whether I would come across some other peonies and hey, what did I find? Another so-called P. wittmanniana, but this time from Mazandaran province, which lies much further to the East and which is the location where P. archibaldii is described from. And indeed, they are now more white, and the carpels are glabrous. I’m not sure if much can be said about height of the plants from the images. It won’t end the discussion whether or not it is an independent species, it does still resemble P. tomentosa a lot, but at least there seem to be small differences that might warrant subspecies status I think. That’s only a name and it’s not all that important of course, it seems to be a pretty plant as well.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrlpbWmv2lD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==