Hello Hannah,

Paeonia parnassica is not easy in cultivation. The best ist pot culture.

I have a 6-year old plant, I hope for the first flower in 2020 or 2021. And a young plant too.

I have my plant in a pot under glass from october to march. The other time half-shade near my house with protect again summer rain.

Soil is 3 parts potting soil, 1 Seramis, 1 Perlite, 1 Aqualit and 1 Sand. Good drainage with lime stone.

Be carefully with watering. A bit more in Spring and first time of Summer, when the leaves faded, only small.

Temperature in Winter 0-5 C.

Best regards

Jan

I have my plant in a 20 cm pot. I bought the plant in 2017 as three years old plant but I don‘t know, how long it takes usually to the first flower.

@jani if you know of a source for another three year old plant, I’d be very interested to know 🙂 I’ve once bought a small seedling, but as it turns out, it’s mislabeled. This year, for the first time after many years of searching, I was able to buy some seeds, only a few, but hopefully they’ll germinate and grow. Everybody I’ve spoken to that has grown this species has had trouble growing it and most (if not all) have lost it. Good drainage seems to be essential indeed and, from my experience with another Mediterranean species P. mascula ssp hellenica I would agree that it’s best not to water it in late Summer after the foliage has died off. If it’s anything like hellenica, then my experience was that wet soil at the end of Summer (after foliage had dried), was able to kill the ‘crown’ of the root system and hence those plants were gone…

Unfortunately, at this time I don‘t know a source of three year old Paeonia parnassica.

I received my plant from Vlastimil Pilous from Czech Republic. But in the last two years he offered wrong plants, which are Paeonia mascula ssp. hellenica, which also grow at the same location on Mt. Parnass.

The only Person, I know that offered Paeonia parnassica at this time is Jan Moers from Belgium. He offered 1-year old plants last year.

All of my Friends, which had Paeonia parnassica in their garden, lost them. But my plant grows very well in pot. And my young plant too.

It’s a small world… The seeds of it I’ve just received are from Vlastimil Pilous. They are ‘wild collected’  and if you don’t know the difference between hellenica and parnassica, the mistake is easily made, more so if he doesn’t collect them himself. We’ll see. I got some P. clusii plants from him and, although still very small, they seem to be true-to-name.

My mislabeled plant of parnassica is from Jan Moors, so that’s not much help either. Most of his plants are also correctly labeled, this being an exception. I assume he also gets many of his seeds from Vlastimil Pilous, so parnassica clearly is a difficult one to obtain.

Thanks for the info!