“What will become of the plants that are not distinctive enough to register and not poor enough to throw away?”

This is the question that all hybridizers find themselves asking at some point. If I remember correctly, Roy Person would let the public come in and dig up all the seedlings that he was not interested in keeping ! This may not be the best approach, but the question is still a dilemma for hybridizers.

My sense is that the best plants for further hybridizing are often not the plants that are most worthy of commercial introduction. Plants for introduction need to be good of course, but sometimes non-introducible plants from the same cross have valuable qualities that the introduced ones might not have, By that I mean good pollen, or the ability to make seeds. Such plants may also have spectacular vigor, or remarkably strong stems. Their flowers may not be remarkable, but they can contain many of the same genetics as the introducable plant has.

I know for myself that I have several plants like this. They will never be introduced, but when combined with other varieties through hybridization their value is proven.

To see more of Han’s hybridizing results, it’s worth taking a trip to Han’s website. While it’s not in English, he shows us the outcomes of his various crosses, not only with tennifolia, but with other varieties as well, and is something that can give the casual observer an idea of what hybridizers are up against, when they have to evaluate the results of their crosses.

http://www.andreas-maschke.de/wordpress_paeonien/

Does anyone know when the Double Pink Fernleaf Aunt Fritzi or Little Erna will become available?

That may take a while. The article was originally written in 2013 and offers the description of the flowering plants then (which had at the time not yet been named). Those were all plants of which there was only one. Thus suppose they have been divided Fall 2013 and some sent on towards some growers. Then they may or may not have divided again in 2015 and maybe 2017. Suppose three divisions could each time be obtained, then we would now have 27 plants in their first year of growth again (1-3, 3-9, 9-27). This is a best-case-scenario with division every two years (it might also take 3 years), good multiplication rate and in the hypothesis that each and every plant is divided again (thus Hans not keeping any plants for himself or for hybridizing). But as Hans would say: “I believe it is known that tenuifolia clones dont multiply as quickly as some other peonies”, thus arguably the number will be smaller. The first years of a new cultivar is simply building up stock, which in the beginning goes very slow, but once you get to the larger numbers, it can go very quick of course. I believe there’s great market potential for these cultivars as they are unknown to most people, completely different, and they offer both spectacular foliage and flowers, thus season-long interest. The combination of scarce supply and serious demand (in peonies in general, but such rarities in particular) may result in what I would expect to be very high prices initially.

The registered cultivars are being propagated at the following three nurseries: Joshua Scholten (www.peonyshop.com), Wolfgang Giessler (www.giessler-paeonien.de) and Steffen Schulze (www.pfingstrosengaertnerei.de). Hans thinks the first one to offer it will probably be Joshua. Little Erna is already listed on his website as available from the year 2021, which in the ideal situation would mean dividing next year again and in 2021, thus two more propagating cycles. I don’t know from how many divisions he started, but assume he had 1, then he would have some 75 divisions by then, of which most must surely be kept to grow on for further propagation. Yes, new peony cultivars can stay ‘new’ for a very long time when you compare them to other plants…