Hello! Does anyone know why the bud and leaves look like this? I been trying to google it without any matches. The leaves were fairly normal until this week, where it almost looks similar to peach leaf curl and the bud came out of the ground semi open like that. It's the second time I got a flower bud that's semi open, the first once cause lemon chiffon to entirely die back during the summer due to rotting.

Botrytis? You can read-up and judge - I sure hope not.

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Hi Helen. Those peonies that come up bud first like Lemon Chiffon are so susceptible to frost damage. I would remove the bud and icky leaves. Hopefully it will do better as it grows.

Topdecker said:Botrytis? You can read-up and judge - I sure hope not.

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My first thought was botrytis the other day, but when I was taking the pictures it didn't look like it match it much at all. I was flipping and looking at the leaves, they're oddly "bubbly" and curling. I am almost wondering if it's bug related? I am going to go out and check for mites today.

Mieko- luckily it's not lemon chiffon, that's doing well this year! It's something from Wu's that I forgot to tag and waiting for it to bloom to figure out what it is. I was wondering if it's frost damaged, but we had such a mild winter and it was covered in 3 inches of mulch.

I don't know what causes the above either. A few of my peonies exhibited this problem. It seemed to affect a few buds but left some buds untouched. I sure would like to know why too. Here is mine on Rose Heart. This peony did not have this problem last year but it is showing up this year.