Apparently peonies have flowered in
the gardens of Oregon almost from the state's beginnings, as many
of the settlers coming West during the 19th century carried dormant
peony roots tucked into the nooks and crannies of their covered
wagons. However, I first noticed them here in the Northwest just
a few years ago during an early May visit to the Berry Botanic
Garden in SW Portland - in particular a huge, almost forest-like
tree peony covered with gigantic yellow blooms (left) and a sturdy
herbaceous peony with striking bicolor blossoms (right).
Peony plants can live for over 100
years, so it's not surprising that many of the commercial peony
growers in the Willamette Valley "have roots" in earlier
Oregon generations. Allan Rodgers, for many decades the owner
of Caprice Farms in Sherwood, one of Oregon's first peony specialists
and author of one of the most popular and authoritative books
on the subject, obtained much of his original stock from the Marx
nursery in Boring, OR, where Walter M had been a noted hybridizer
for several decades before that; Allan's son Rick, who owns Brothers
Peonies in Wilsonville (specializing in tree peonies), traces
much of his stock to Marx as well. Carol A, of Adelman's Peonies
in Brooks, OR (where many of the pix below were taken), was inspired
by visits to the many peony varieties in the Salem nursery of
Henry Hartwig (whose granddaughter Elizabeth is a 3rd generation
grower in Duluth, MN); and Pacific Peonies of Canby, OR, began
in 1993 with transplants from the Niva farm near Tigard, where
Albert N had been a hybridizer for many years.
The genus Paeonia is divided into three
sections. Paeon currently comprises ca 25 herbaceous species
(ca 1/3 tetraploid, the rest diploid), perennial plants that die
down at the end of each season and regrow from ground level the
following year; they are fairly widely but disjointly distributed
throughout Asia, northern Africa, and central and southern Europe.
Onaepia contains only two herbaceous (diploid) species,
both native to the West Coast of the United States: P. californica,
which is endemic from San Diego north to Monterrey and flowers
in early spring; and P. brownii, which is found at higher elevations
from central CA to British Columbia and flowers during June and
July. Moutan contains the tree peonies, which are in fact
shrub-like plants with a permanent woody structure that rarely
exceeds 6-8 feet in height; there are up to 9 (diploid) species,
all endemic to China (where many wild species have recently been
rediscovered).
The cultivation of peonies for medicinal
use can supposedly be traced back to the prehistoric Xia Dynasty
(2000-1500 BC) in China, where herbaceous varieties are still
called shaoyao, 'medicinal herb plant'; the tree peony, originally
just 'tree shaoyao', was first described over a millenium later
during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), when a clear distinction
between the two types first seems to have been made. Peonies as
ornamentals were supposedly first grown at the end of the Sui
dynasty during the reign of the Emperor Yang (605-617 AD), who
apparently restricted cultivation to imperial use and allocated
different flower colors to favored officials according to rank.
Peonies spread throughout the country during the T'ang dynasty
(618-906) that followed, and the tree peony (mudan, 'king of flowers')
in particular - now China's official national flower - grew in
popularity as Chinese breeders developed huge, double-flowered
varieties, both tree (left) and herbaceous (right), in a wide
range of colors.
Both herbaceous and tree peonies were
introduced into Japan at the beginning of the 8th century, where
they soon became renowned as the 'flower of wealth'. When Japanese
horticulturists began to work with them, they simplified the Chinese
flowers, producing lighter, less complicated heads, and plants
with a more upright habit.
As in China, peonies were originally
cultivated in Europe for their medicinal value, apparently first
by the Greeks, to whom it was known as the 'queen of herbs'. Benedictine
monks finally introduced peonies as ornamental plants in the early
Middle Ages; the flowers they grew in their monastery gardens
were known as the 'Benedictine rose', probably a hybrid double
form of P. officinalis, a hardy species native to central Europe.
Significant peony breeding began in Europe (primarily France)
at the end of the 18th c after the introduction of the herbaceous
P. lactiflora from China. Although tree peonies were brought to
England at about the same time, subsequent plants proved difficult
to obtain and only became available from European nurseries in
the 1860s. Chinese varieties with heavy double blooms remained
popular until the late 1800s, after which tastes apparently shifted
to the lighter, more upright Japanese varieties as they were introduced.
The popularity of peonies in Europe declined in the early part
of the 20th c, but has recently experienced a comeback.
European settlers brought ornamental
herbaceous peonies (probably forms of P. officinalis) to North
America in the late 1700s. While these were grown in many pioneer
gardens, the popularity of peonies really exploded after the arrival
of P. lactiflora hybrids during the 1830s. American nurseries
began offering new varieties of their own by the 1850s, and by
the turn of the century, the US had become the major peony producer
in the world. However, America's first truly significant peony
hybridizer was Arthur P. Saunders, a chemistry professor at Hamilton
College in Clinton, NY. Saunders systematiclly hybridized species
peonies with P. lactiflora starting in 1915, eventually developing
over 17,000 cultivars, including over 300 named varieties; Saunders
also included tree peonies in his hybridization program, introducing
more than 70 of these hybrids as well. When Saunders died in 1953,
his assistant William Gratwick in New York, as well as many others
(including Allan Rogers in Oregon), continued to work with his
cultivars, helping to make the United States the peony hybridization
capital of the world during the latter half of the 20th century.
The popularity of peonies appears to have grown dramatically in
the last decade throughout the US, as well as locally.
Although the wild species from which
they were bred all have single flowers with three basic parts
- petal, stamen, and carpel (pistil), the American Peony Society
(APS) describes several distinct forms for flowers of cultivated
peony hybrids, distinguished by the stage or degree to which the
stamens and carpels of the flower gradually lose their reproductive
roles and are turned into petals. The Single (see below)
has a tuft of fertile golden stamens with green carpels at the
center, surrounded by a row of five or more colored petals.
Semi-doubles
(left) have the same fertile center tuft as the Single, but surrounded
by several rows of petals. The Japanese (right) is also
similar to the Single, except that the outer "guard petals"
are enlarged and its stamens are sterile and flattened to form
a dense central tuft of petal-like "staminodes" that
can take many different shapes, but usually retain some of their
original yellow color.
The Anemone (left) is similar
to the Japanese, except that the stamen segments are further transformed
into a tight tuft of "petalodes," slender petals that
are a blend of the flower's predominant color with a tinge of
stamen yellow. The Bomb (or Bomb Double), in which the
center petals are smaller than the outer petals but have the same
texture and color, and ideally form a neatly tailored ball or
mound, is sometimes differentiated from the Anemone, but these
forms are often combined, eg, in catalogs. Finally, Double
(or Full Double) flowers (right), the classic, softball-sized
or larger, flower-in-flower peony form, are completely sterile,
with stamens and carpels fully transformed into staminodes and
larger petals, forming a hemisphere.
Today peony hybrids can be found in
a broad range of colors from pure white through pink, coral, and
red to dark maroon (left); a wide variety of bicolored flowers
have also been developed. Many bright yellow tree peonies are
also available, but in herbaceous peonies, this color is confined
so far to a few pale crosses with P. mlokosewitschii (the only
herbaceous species yellow). However, thanks to the amazing efforts
of the Tokyo hybridizer Toichi Itoh in the early 1960s, who successfully
crossed a yellow tree with a white herbaceous peony, bright yellow
Intersectionals like Bartzella (right), which are herbaceous
in habit, are now available (as well as intersectionals in a full
palette of other peony colors).
