Like much of the rest of the world, I love garden peonies—Paeonia lactiflora–for their lush, unabashedly sumptuous flowers and gorgeous colors. A single bloom in a tall bottle constitutes an elegant arrangement. Snip a handful of stems and you can create an over-the-top floral extravaganza. No wonder they are popular as wedding flowers, particularly for the well-heeled, who can afford to indulge in hundreds of wide-open peonies for a single ceremony.
If some peonies have a flaw, it is light or nonexistent scent. Even varieties that do not tickle your nose still bring something unique and special to the garden, but in my view, the peonies with strong fragrance are the best of all.
My favorite peony is deep rose in color and perfumes the air with a pervasive, intoxicating old-rose scent. It is full of mystery, with a name and a history that I do not know. It came with the house, but I am not sure which of the previous owners planted it. The only certainty is that I found it growing—or trying to grow—in the shade of a mammoth yew shrub in the front garden. In our first year here, it produced a few glossy, green leaves, but didn’t stand a chance of putting out flowers while enveloped in the stygian darkness under the yew branches.
Peonies have a reputation for not liking disturbance, but I threw caution to the wind because I was afraid that a perfectly good plant was going to die for lack of light. I dug the root up carefully, only to have it split in two in my hands the minute it was out of the ground. Having made it my business to save the peony, I decided to take both halves and plant them in sunny spaces in the back garden. I figured they couldn’t fare any worse than in their previous location and might do a lot better.
To my great relief, the sundered peony root sections flourished and in the second year produced their first blooms. Then and now, they are double-flowered, with lots of big rosy petals and an abundance of plump round buds. As with all herbaceous peonies, these buds secrete a sticky substance that draws ants, but I don’t care.
I am not sure I noticed the fragrance the first year I grew these orphan peonies, but I certainly did thereafter. Whether the blooms are basking in the garden sunshine or sitting indoors on the dining room table, they exude a strong perfume that is identical to that produced by some of my old-fashioned rose varieties. And since a single mystery peony bloom is as big as about six ‘Felicia’ roses, the scent is even more powerful.
Not knowing is a terrible thing and I have scoured peony reference sources in an effort to find the name of my rose-scented garden delight. The best I can do is identify probable candidates. Dating my plant is hard, because peonies tend to be long lived. Logic says that mine was probably planted when the yew was small enough so it did not shade the peony. That means the peony was probably at least twenty years old when I discovered it seventeen years ago. The strong scent suggests late nineteenth or early twentieth century breeding, because that was a time when intense fragrance was highly sought after among hybridizers and peony fanciers. Of course, it is possible to plant a newly propagated example of an old variety in a brand new garden, so the jury is still out on the age of both my particular peony and its variety.
Despite the variables in the heritage equation, I have identified several possible candidates. One is called, quite appropriately, ‘Vivid Rose’. Introduced in 1952, it has double flowers, like mine, and is described as being fragrant. The pictures look right, though I would not describe the color of my peony as “vivid”. Another candidate is the appealing ‘Better Times’. The color, described as “deep rose pink” is right, and the fragrance descriptor–“rose scent”–is on the mark. It came out in 1941, which places it in the running as far as the age of the variety and/or the specimen. The “cerise-rose” ‘Dayton’, introduced in 1962, looks right too and has a rose fragrance, but some sources say it has a slightly “silvery” look. I have only a miniscule knowledge of the vast universe of peonies, but based on the research so far, I think ‘Better Times’ is the leading contender.
Unless I can get a peony expert to take a look at my rose-scented specimen when it is in bloom, I may never find out its real name. That will have to do. Though I like to know the details of a plant’s provenance, it is not always essential. In this case, I can get all the satisfaction I will ever need by letting the perfume waft over me.