{"id":3701,"date":"2022-05-30T06:16:02","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T14:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3701"},"modified":"2022-05-30T06:16:02","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T14:16:02","slug":"paeonia-maxima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/paeonia-maxima\/","title":{"rendered":"Paeonia Maxima"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"peony<\/a>Only eight short weeks ago, gardeners in my part of the world were rhapsodizing over the diminutive glories of snowdrops and crocuses.\u00a0 Now, even the foliage is gone with the wind, and the memory of their charms has been washed away in the high tide of one of the greatest floral show horses of all\u2014the peony.<\/p>\n

The peonies are blooming.\u00a0 In my garden this over-the-top show begins with a red-flowered Chinese tree peony or Paeonia suffruticosa that I bought years ago.\u00a0 It was supposed to have been a yellow-flowered shrub, but it didn\u2019t even pop a blossom until two years after it arrived.\u00a0 By that time a refund was out of the question.\u00a0 Since the color was lovely on its own, I reconciled myself to waiting a little longer for a yellow one.<\/p>\n

I also grow a lovely, pink-flowered tree peony that was given to me a decade ago by a friend who was moving.\u00a0 It is not as big and bold as the not-yellow tree peony, but bears gorgeous shell-pink double blooms that burst out ahead of the other peonies.<\/p>\n

The tree peonies have shed their petals already, but they were only the opening act.\u00a0 Now the herbaceous or garden peonies, otherwise known as Paeonia lactiflora, are in their element.\u00a0 One of my favorites, \u2018Festiva Maxima\u2019, bears enormous pouffy white flowers that conceal small streaks of red within their multitudes of petals.\u00a0 \u2018Festiva\u2019 is an old variety, dating back to 1851 and a French breeder named Auguste Joseph Meillez.\u00a0 The plants can grow as tall as four feet, with the deeply dissected foliage characteristic of garden peonies.\u00a0 At eight inches or more in diameter, it only takes a few \u2018Festiva\u2019 flowers to fill a bowl.<\/p>\n

Good plant breeders generally beget, or at least influence other plant breeders. That may have been the case with Meillez, who supposedly influenced Victor Lemoine, fabled breeder of gorgeous and romantic peonies, lilacs, fuchsias, begonias, and mock oranges, to name a few.\u00a0 One of Lemoine\u2019s finest, which is still in commerce today, is \u2018Sarah Bernhardt\u2019, named for the great French tragedienne and introduced in 1906.\u00a0 To quote a catalog, \u2018Sarah\u2019 is \u201clarge, double, dark rose pink\u201d and strongly fragrant.\u00a0 Unlike the actress, who took her final bows over a century ago, \u2018Sarah Bernhardt\u2019 is still going strong.<\/p>\n

For a long time I thought that I had \u2018Sarah\u2019 in the garden.\u00a0 When I moved into my house, I found a single peony stem sprouting bravely under a large holly tree.\u00a0 I expect it was planted when the holly was young and forgotten as it grew to immense size.\u00a0 I dug the peony out carefully, only to have the root break apart in my hands at the end of the process.\u00a0 I planted both halves in a sunny spot.\u00a0 The halves have prospered, and my back garden is now home to two large clumps of dark pink peonies that smell divinely of roses.<\/p>\n

I assumed that my mystery plant was \u2018Sarah\u2019 because it bore the characteristic rose fragrance.\u00a0 More recently though, I have decided that the flowers on my burgeoning clumps look more like those of \u2018Edulis Superba\u2019, which is even older than \u2018Festiva Maxima\u2019 or \u2018Sarah Bernhardt\u2019, having been introduced by the French breeder Nicholas Lemon in 1824.<\/p>\n

Whatever the name of my rose-scented beauty, it has been joined over the years by other peonies, including the huge \u2018Crinkled White\u2019, which looks a bit like a giant poppy, with crepe paper-like single petals around a giant cluster of golden stamens.\u00a0 \u2018Raspberry Sundae\u2019 is as American as its name suggests, bred by the wonderful Carl Klehm before 1951.\u00a0 I still lament the fact that the fabulous Song Sparrow Nursery, home to the Klehm family, is no more.\u00a0 Their array of beautiful peonies\u2014some bred by the Klehms and some from other breeders\u2014was superb.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At least I have several Klehm peonies, including \u2018Raspberry Sundae\u2019, to remember them by.\u00a0 The flowers are big and double, combining pink, white and pale yellow in each bloom.<\/p>\n

And finally, years after the not-yellow peony arrived, I acquired two yellow-flowered peonies.\u00a0 They are not garden peonies or tree peonies, but a hybrid of the two species.\u00a0 In the nursery trade this type of plant is known as an \u201cintersectional\u201d peony.\u00a0 My two are \u2018Bartzella\u2019, with large, double yellow blooms, accented sometimes by a few red flares on the petals\u2019 outsides, and clusters of yellow stamens.\u00a0 The \u2018Bartzella\u2019 in my front strip, holding forth under the Carolina silverbell tree, always provokes admiring comment, with its big, upturned blooms.\u00a0 Its sibling, in my lower back garden, bears the same blooms, but the stems are always too weak to support the big flowerheads, so they droop.\u00a0 I have tried to remedy the situation by tying them up and propping them up.\u00a0 Next year I will get proper peony supports for my back garden \u2018Bartzella\u2019, so the plant can be as showy as its front garden counterpart.<\/p>\n

Last night I dreamed about peonies, so this morning I went out and clipped enough flowers and buds to fill a big pitcher.\u00a0 As May winds down, this all-peony arrangement is the ultimate luxury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only eight short weeks ago, gardeners in my part of the world were rhapsodizing over the diminutive glories of snowdrops and crocuses.\u00a0 Now, even the foliage is gone with the wind, and the memory of their charms has been washed away in the high tide of one of the greatest floral show horses of all\u2014the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2],"tags":[2092,2714,2715,303,2090,302,2716,2712,2713],"class_list":["post-3701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","tag-festiva-maxima","tag-bartzella","tag-edulis-superba","tag-heirloom-peonies","tag-paeonia","tag-peonies","tag-sarah-bernhardt-peony","tag-showy-flowers","tag-tall-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3703,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions\/3703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}