Gorgeous!

I really like the contrast between foliage and rockii flower. Your hybrid is very pretty. How does it look as a bush? Does it fill out?

Zencat said:Elsa, can you order online? I can't imagine a garden without these or Irises.

The nurseries I contacted had the excuse that the plants are expensive. I suspect the main reason is that not many South African gardeners actually don't know Peonies.
If it wasn't for sites like this, seed trading, and British gardening programs, I wouldn't have had 50% of the plants in my garden.

Who is your favorite tree peony source? I see one on A&D I like. Oh, and they have to ship to Alaska. Well, I guess I could do the transship thing to Portland. A tree peony should be able to handle a day or so more in transit.

My last tree peony flower: Koukamon

Wow...

Gorgeous.

Pwinget, the bush has not filled out much yet but I only planted it last fall. The leaves are very dainty.

Beautiful, Pwin . I wish my Koukamon had survived

Pwinget - is the color of your Koukamon true to color? It looks a little different from mines that I posted a few weeks ago. I wonder if there is a gradation to the colors within that variety.

Yes it is. I couldn't capture the richness of the colour, but the hue is magenta. I love it. I was wondering about that as the flower has been described to me as maroon (for this plant, too, when I had bought it), but mine isn't. It has been cloudy lately, the light has been blue, and the colour hasn't been turning out right with my camera phone so I haven't posted Koukamon again. Once I get my big camera sorted, I'll take another photo. Also, because of the cool weather, the flower hasn't really opened yet. Yesterday it rained, but the flower didn't sag like the others because it's still basically a big gorgeous ball of flower. My Chojuraku hasn't fully opened either. Yachiyo has always been a huge messy flower (avatar pic) and didn't look any different after the rain

I had put stuff in the soil including green sand and a trace mineral fertilizer like azomite (but it's local as azomite isn't found here), and the soil I had used had compost and was hot with bioactivity. One of the tree peonies I had gotten exhibited iron chlorosis, but this year looks like a completely different plant, so the soil is definitely having an effect, to what extent on its hue, I don't know.

2 years ago I started to add azomite for the first time in the planting holes. Have not really noticed if it had made a difference or not. I figure it wouldn't hurt :)

Peonies are very prominent in Chinese paintings. I was in northern China two weeks ago and saw this tree peony bed. It was too bad that it was too early and none was blooming. It would be a gorgeous sight when all is blooming.

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It's a shame to have missed the display, and they were full of buds, too Last year, a man from China listed peony recipes on another forum. People were fascinated, but were unwilling to sacrifice their peony roots to make dinner.

My Koukamon is in its second year of bloom. I don't know if that would make a difference. I think adding azomite can only help, too, as its just finely ground rock. The degree of microbial activity in your soil will determine how much of the product's mineral content will be available to your plants. I wonder how much is needed, as the product I have says you can't add too much! I'd like to conduct an experiment with peonies and how they are affected by certain additive fertilizers like Glacial Rock Dust (which is our azomite equivalent). Maybe I can next year if I can get a bunch of peony seeds to germinate. Let me show you how one of my peonies has changed (no bloom this year)(almost all soil replaced)



Same plant this year:



Look at how different! And my tree peony leaves seem to have something going on, particularly on what may be the weaker plants, that may indicate too much of something. However, I need to investigate it more because I'm having trouble finding information regarding the problem.

What a difference! What's wrong with it? I don't see what you're seeing.

I didn't think anything was wrong with it either. Then the peony came up this year and looked like the second pic. That made me wonder. Then I happened upon an article for iron chlorosis, which is the yellowing of leaves caused by iron deficiency, and that first pic looks like what had happened to it. The leaves in the first pic are floppy, too. Was the soil change good enough to fix the problem? Or did it need the addition of rock dust? I've still got a lot to learn. Here's an article about it from Utah State University.

http://forestry.usu.edu/htm/ci...

It just happened to be the first article I found today and you're from Utah so

From the university gardens, P. lutea:





They had several peonies in bud but with no ids.

But in the second pic, your plant looks fine. Seems the soil change was enough.

Oh, the second pic? I thought you had been asking about the first. I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Nothing wrong with the 2nd pic as far as I know, but I'm seeing that in some of my other trees, which are using the same soil/rock dust/green sand combo, the leaves are reddening along the edges and then shrinking, causing the leaves to pucker. The leaves seem to be healthy otherwise. The plants have good drainage, get regular water - the soil feels good, and the flowers bloom well. A man from the local garden centre thought at first it was botrytis, but there's no blackening and further deterioration. So he thought it was frost damage on the root since my plants developed sooner due to being in a microclimate. However, some are presenting with this issue as time goes on. It's a curious issue for now and not alarming, and I hope it stays that way.

Sometimes I see a bit of frost damage on mine but it isn't a bother.

Here's Hana-kisoi today.

And my finger. Lol