Hello to all who’s reading this,

Today a customer (wholesale cutflower client) of mine showed me a peony I had never seen before. He bought it a few days ago in a distribution centre and it came from the South of France. It was labeled “Coral Yellow Cream” and this is what it looked like then:

I had never heard of this cultivar and it’s not registered with the American Peony Society (APS). But some peony varieties are never registered with the APS (several Chinese ones of course, and it seems to be a trend for several growers here to introduce new varieties without registering them properly with the APS) or are simply renamed (several Chinese ones) to sell them better. From the image above I thought it might be Coral Supreme, which I grow, but have never propagated as I think in pink there are better cultivars (Coral Supreme is difficult to grow straight up, some wind will blow it sideways, after which the stem is curved).

Today he thus brought me two stems of this Coral Yellow Cream and it was obvious that this wasn’t Coral Supreme. Clearly it is related to Coral Charm or Coral Supreme. The foliage is the same, the sturdiness of the stem is the same, bud size and flower form identical and also a curved stem, thus typical of those varieties. I’d say it more resembles Coral Charm than Coral Supreme as Coral Charm is the one with the larger buds here. It surely doesn’t resemble Coral Sunset if you might consider it, I grow enough of both to see the difference.

But the colour is different from Coral Charm. And, different opinions notwithstanding, I think it’s even prettier than Coral Charm. It’s more salmon in bud and it remains that colour more or less when open. Which is unlike Coral Charm changing from that reddish pink in bud into salmon orange to end up pale yellow before the petals fall. I’ve take some pictures of it and put some Coral Charm next to it for comparison. The open colour is more or less the same as the bud, it might pale a little and it looks a bit like a flower of Cytherea with the colour faded just before petal drop. At the edge of the petals there’s a little bit of pink. It’s very, very attractive to my eyes. Another difference is that it has no fragrance to speak of (which is a good think when you compare it to the unpleasant odour of Coral Charm).

I would think this is a mutation from Coral Charm, someone must have spotted it and propagated it. There were only 40 stems of it available in the distribution centre, nobody knew from which grower it came and it was no longer available since then. It was dazzlingly expensive (nothing came close, it was four times the price of the most expensive Coral Charm and at this time peonies aren’t cheap). I wonder whether anyone would have some information about this peony? I must say I’d like to grow it myself.

This is Coral Yellow Cream

On the left some flowers and buds of Coral Charm to compare the colour.

A close-up of a Coral Charm bud and an opening Coral Yellow Cream

Close-up of open Coral Yellow Cream

The bended stem of Coral Yellow Cream

Open flower of Coral Yellow Cream