2013 Peony 'Grace Root' Adventitious Bud Stem Flower

Peony 'Grace Root'
Peony 'Grace Root' definitely is a beautiful plant. This peony was hybridized by Saunders and registered in 1940. According to the registration for this plant, it is a lobata hybrid: "Single - Pink - Hybrid. Clear light salmon pink, cut shaped single. Albiflora x lobata. Lists in Bulletins 91 and 129." Peony 'Grace Root' is beautiful not only for her lovely neon coral-pink blossoms that stand out in the early peony bloom season, but also because of her rare ability to generate new plants from her roots.

Peony 'Grace Root' Plant
with Adventitious Bud/Stem Growing From Root
This curiosity is called adventitious bud development. These adventitious buds develop in an unusual place on the plant, the roots, instead of the usual location for bud development, the crown. This small plantlet can be separated from the mother plant by root division. Normal peony division would require a crown and root division to obtain a viable plant. However this new peony plantlet will develop its own crown when separated and planted out on its own.
Peony 'Grace Root' Adventitious Bud/Stem Growing From Root
This particular adventitious peony bud / plantlet is actually in its second year, and it also developed a bloom this year. It assumably benefited from still being attached to the mother plant, which allowed it to use energy from the mother's plants storage roots to develop a flower bud so quickly. When grown from seed, peonies can take 3-5 years to flower or more! I plan to separate out this adventitious bud / plantlet this fall. I'll keep you posted on how it does. I'm curious to see how well it grows, and how long it takes to make babies (adventitious buds) of its own!
Peony 'Grace Root' Flower on Adventitious Bud/Stem

2013 First Peony Seedling Develops Immature Bud

Sorry to say that the First Peony Seedling with Developing Bud grown from seed in my garden has become an immature bud. This also happens sometimes on divisions that don't have quite enough energy saved up in their storage roots to develop a mature bud. This may have been the case for my new seedling as well. As you can see the bud has turned from green to red, and will gradually shrivel and dry up. Developing buds will stay green and slowly increase in size. Sometimes you just have to wait another year to see your peony's beautiful face. However with another year of growth, your peony should hopefully have the chance to develop even stronger roots in order to grow even larger the next year with (hopefully!) a nice blossom. :-)

Peony Seedling with Immature Bud

2013 First Peony Seedling with Developing Bud

Well, I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be in for a treat this peony bloom season. While checking over my original peony seedling test bed, I found a bud on one of the plants! That is just so exciting. This plant came from one of the seeds of the Peony 'Lady Alexandra Duff' that I planted in 2007, the first year that I planted any peony seeds. So it has been 5 years since I planted that seed! Perhaps some of these peony seedlings could have bloomed sooner if I had given them more water or more sun or some fertilizer, perhaps. So these seeds have truly been a product of Mother Nature with very little to no intervention from me. The only thing I did was harvest them, keep track of where they came from, and plant them in the ground! It is not uncommon for very small buds to never develop into blooming size. So I will definitely be watching over this one and maybe giving it a little extra water to try to help increase the odds. If it blooms it will be the first ever peony bloom that I will get to see from any of my peony seed plantings.
Small Bud on Seedling Peony Plant


Seedling of Peony 'Lady Alexandra Duff'

2013 Intersectional/Itoh Peony Buds

OMG! This is going to be an exciting year in my garden for intersectional peony blooms. I am super excited! I tried to count all of the buds I could find on the intersectional plants that I have, and it looks like there will be more varieties of intersectional peonies blooming in one year in my garden than ever before. Even some of the new plants from the 2012 Peony Experiments - Intersectional Divisions have buds on them. I took some pictures today of as many different intersectional peony buds that I could find. It looks like I have blooms developing on at least 11 different varieties! There may be more to come. I have been eagerly reviewing the intersectional peonies almost daily for buds, and each day I find more and more. Here are the pictures of the ones I have so far. They are in various stages of development...

Peony 'Bartzella'	Peony 'First Arrival'
Peony 'Garden Treasure'	Peony 'Morning Lilac'
Peony 'Pastel Splendor'	Peony 'Scarlet Heaven'
Peony 'Sequestered Sunshine'	Peony 'Singing in the Rain'
Peony 'Sonoma Amethyst'	Peony 'White Emperor'
Peony 'Yellow Crown'

2012 Peony Disease Bud Blast

I've had several peonies with buds that weren't able to develop. I think it has to do with the weather, which has been a bit weird this spring. It was really rainy right before the foliage and buds started to develop, and then it was dry for quite while they were growing. I could tell that there was some bud blast and blight on some of the foliage, but I think the succeeding dry period prevented it from developing further (which could have been much worse). Established plants seemed to make out with only a bit of brown near the edges of leaves or a rotten stem or perhaps a bud or two that succumbed to the disease. However some peonies that I ordered just last fall were really taken over by blight and disease. I planted these roots in brand new locations. So no other peonies had been planted there. It was previously just organically maintained lawn. It makes me wonder if the peonies had been sprayed with fungicides by the growers to keep the diseases at bay. Then perhaps when they were planted here in my garden, the plants succumbed to the disease that had been previously kept in check by chemicals. Maybe the peonies will come back next year or maybe they will die. I have had both outcomes with new plants from reputable vendors. Let's hope for the best...

Established Plant - Peony 'Do Tell'

Established Plant - Peony 'Scarlet O'Hara'

Newly Planted - Peony 'Carina'

The Great Peony Massacre of 2011

So today I was cleaning up my peonies (late again, I know!), and I actually chopped off one of their heads. If you look at the pink bud in the middle of the picture, you'll notice that it has been decisively severed from its root. So here's the lesson for all of you. If you haven't cut down all of last year's peony stems yet, do it now before this year's stems and blooms are sacrificed. Don't wait too long so that you can prevent unnecessary bud loss. :-)

2010 Peony Bud Count

I am so excited! I have only had one bloom last year on an intersectional peony, Yellow Crown. This year I have buds on 3 different intersectional peonies! They are Bartzella with 9 buds, Morning Lilac with 2 buds, and Yellow Crown with 2 buds. So I guess you can tell I did bud counts on all of my peonies today. There are several with no buds, maybe they'll bloom next year, to as many as 81 buds on one of them, an unknown double peony. My Festiva Maxima peony also has 50 buds on it. This is going to be a great year for the peonies as long as it is not too rainy in May. We have had a pretty dry April, which has been good for the emerging foliage. The reduced precipitation seems to have had a good affect on preventing botrytis blight on the new foliage, which seems to be much more susceptible to it than mature foliage. I think we could use some rain soon, though. As long as it's not like a week of continuous rain, to give the foliage a bit of time to dry out. That would be great.

Peony 'Morning Lilac'