Right now in my garden, the peonies are finishing their annual run. Known botanically as Paeonia lactiflora, they are universally beloved 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. With their luxe appearance and romantic associations, it is no wonder that the blooms are popular as wedding flowers, particularly for the well-heeled, who can afford to indulge in hundreds of frothy peonies for a single ceremony.
Peonies are pretty close to perfection, with one caveat. Many of them offer little scent. Of course nose-tickling is not everything, but in my view, peonies with strong fragrance are the best of all.
My favorite peony boasts a plethora of deep, rose-pink petals, which perfume the air with a pervasive, intoxicating old-rose scent. The plant is full of mystery, with a name and a history that I do not know. It came with the house, but I have no idea 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 in the front garden. In our first year here, the peony produced a few glossy, green leaves, but didn’t even attempt to put out flowers while enveloped in the yew’s stygian shadow.
Peonies have a reputation for being intolerant of disturbance, but I ignored that consideration because I was afraid that a perfectly good plant was going to die for lack of light. I dug the root up carefully, handling it like a newborn baby. The “baby” responded to that gesture by splitting in two in my hands the minute it was out of the ground. Having made it my business to save the plant, I decided to keep 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 produced their first blooms in the second year after planting. Each year since, they have put forth an increasing number of plump, round buds that give way puffy balls of rosy petals. As with all herbaceous peonies, the buds secrete a sticky substance that draws ants. The annual ant-fest bothers some people, but I am not one of them.
I am not sure I noticed the fragrance the first year these orphan peonies bloomed, but I certainly did thereafter. Whether the blooms are basking in the garden sunshine or sitting indoors in a vase on the dining room table, they exude a strong perfume that is identical to the scent of 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.
Ignorance is a terrible thing and I have scoured peony reference sources in an effort to find the name of my rose-scented garden treasure. The best I can do is attempt to locate probable candidates. Dating the introduction of my plant is hard, because peonies tend to be long lived. Logic says that mine was probably planted when the slow-growing yew was so small that it did not shade the peony, which means it could have been planted at least 40 years ago. The strong scent suggests late nineteenth or early twentieth century breeding, because at that time, intense fragrance was highly sought after among hybridizers and peony fanciers. Of course, it is fairly common 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.
My research has led me to several possible candidates. One is called, quite appropriately, ‘Vivid Rose’. Introduced in 1952, the plant features 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 possible 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.
Perhaps someday I will find a peony expert willing and able to take a look at my rose-scented specimen when it is in bloom. Until then, its name will be a mystery. That will have to do. I love knowing the details of a specimen’s provenance, but in the end, it us not essential to my enjoyment of the plant. At this time of the year, I can get all the satisfaction I will ever need by holding one of the bodacious blooms up to my nose.