Are there many peonies in this color class? Inquiring minds want to know! Would love to see your collection of peonies in this color category! They can be species, herbaceous, itohs, or tree peonies from any year.

To start, here's Ballerina de Saval:

Here's my Sonoma Amethyst

It looks to me that Sparkling Star has purplish color.


First Arrival - fist bloom

Shima Daijin
I should really take a picture of the whole plant to show how ridiculously large and bud-laden this peony can get...

Beautiful blooms, LG, Anya, and ElPollo! Shima Daijin is huge compared to your hand! Does Shima Daijin take sun exposure and heat well?

SA's color is so pretty! Does it look smoky in person?

Anya, do you have First Arrival bloom pic that is fully opened?

May Lilac



Purplish pink seedling bloom

Here is my first year Bloom_ NOID seedling (grew from seed)

That's a gorgeous seedling, ST52! Do you know its parents? I really like its presentation of its flowers at top of the foliage.

Karen and ST52... both of your seedlings are beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Here's Silver Waves on a Magenta Ocean TP.

Karen, this is fully opened bloom of First arrival. I hope the blooms will look better with age.

Karen：Both parents of that seedling are in my friend's garden. I knew one of them is "feng dan bai" but not sure about the other one。 I am planning to revisit her garden in the spring and would like to find out who might be the candidate of its parent。

This is the tree peony that sold me on the genre period. I took it from a world war II vet's home that my parents bought. I didn't know what it was at the time, just that I had to have it. I have about 3 divisions from the one TP. The original TP was huge and had probably upwards of 50+ blooms.





Sonoma Amethyst (first year root from Adelman's that I planted in November and these are blooms in April.









Opening of Cora Louise


Noid from my mother's garden. A named variety, I just don't know what.


Purple Spider

kousa said:Shima Daijin is huge compared to your hand! Does Shima Daijin take sun exposure and heat well?

This particular plant has a long and storied history and I can tell you that it can take anything Mother Nature and mankind can throw at it. It's planted in full sun and during the Summer we often see temperatures north of 95F. Right now we are around 30F. We can go from drought to thunderstorms in the same year... judge for yourself.



I've found this picture of it on the phone yesterday and as you can see from the uneven growth it also survived a dog training accident.

Gary, your TP saved from the veteran's home is gorgeous! Do you know if the blooms from the older established TP before you divided it have more petals?

ST52, thanks for that pic! Usually dark colored tree peonies flower petals don't take heat and sun well but your Shima Dajin is exceptional!

oh my goodness. ST52, that seedling is just too pretty to not propagate. The flower and petal form is exquisite. If you propagate, I would gladly buy!

Karen - thank you for starting this thread!! I know the kopper/yellow/apricot peonies are all the rage now (and I love them) but I think the lavender/purples are really overlooked. they are my favorites.

Here go mine:

As yet un-named seedlings:







opens lavender and then goes white; purple flares remain



opens lavender and then goes white; purple flares remain


Named varieties:

Shimane Chojuraku: not technically a lavender but to my eye opens as lavender but then goes pink


angel emily on young plant. Closer to a pink but lavender still there somewhat


purple spider:


And a NOID

Karen, the mature bloom looks a lot like Cate's first picture above.

@Lyndakerfarms Wow! Love your collection of NOID TPs! Some of them look like they maybe Rockii types. I really like the ones in the 8th and second pics. Are the ones in the 4th, 5th pics the same as the 8th pic? I have a Rockii NOID TP that looks like your second one very much (with very slight variations).





Kamata Fuji is the most lavender purple of all the lavenders in my garden

Wow! Such a show! thanks for making my day!

kousa said:@Lyndakerfarms Wow! Love your collection of NOID TPs! Some of them look like they maybe Rockii types. I really like the ones in the 8th and second pics. Are the ones in the 4th, 5th pics the same as the 8th pic? I have a Rockii NOID TP that looks like your second one very much (with very slight variations).





Kamata Fuji is the most lavender purple of all the lavenders in my garden

oh my goodness - they are so similar. Was yours from Tree Peony Garden by any chance? That's where we got our starter breeding stock.

btw - the 2nd an 8th seedlings in my pics are my favorites too!

and no, all of the pictures were of different plants. They look quite similar in the pics but IRL there are notable differences. and yes - they do have rockii heritage

oh and I forgot to add in some of my favorite fuschia seedlings. Unfortunately, can't seem to find my fave fuschia but i do like these too!

kousa said: Usually dark colored tree peonies flower petals don't take heat and sun well but your Shima Dajin is exceptional!

The only thing that peony petals don't seem to like is heavy rain. If the Spring is rainy expect blooming to last less than half as long as it should.
I'll make an exception for Copper Kettle and Qi Hua Lu Shang which seem to be quite resistant to rain as well.

@Lyndakerfarms I bought two Rockii TPs from Ebay 5 years ago. One named HONG-XIAN-NU (Red Fairy) and the other one named Hua Die (Colorful Butterfly). They were really small plants which they advertised as 3-5 years size. I was not happy with their misrepresented advertisement at all. One has bloomed so far and that's the above one which they labeled as Hua Die. The other one supposedly Hong Xian Nu has not bloomed yet. I hope to see a bloom from this one this year. I wonder if they mix up the labels because the above one looks alot like the Red Fairy. Cricket Hill Gardens used to sell Hong Xian Nu years ago. I think yours looks a lot like their Hong Xian Nu. Does yours have a very strong and pleasant fragrance?
Do you think the tree peony in 8th pic is Lan Bao Shi (Blue Lotus)? It looks like it!

Elpollo, I can readily believe that Copper King has good substance. Most lutea hybrid TPs have much better substance than Suffruticosas and Rockiis.