Friday Fabulous Flower - Fern-leafed peony

With your kind indulgence, the Phactor shall feature another species of peony (it was either that or another Magnolia).  Actually the most spectacular floral display in our gardens right now is the dark-red flowered tree peony featured on the blog banner; it's just wow!  This peony seems rather diminutive in contrast, but the fern-leafed peony (Paeonia tenuifolia) is quite a handsome herbaceous plant that forms a clump of stems with highly dissected foliage (but not real ferny actually), although handsome, and each stem ends in a 7-8 cm diameter bright scarlet flower, probably the reddest of spring flowers.  They are very showy and slightly earlier than the tree peonies in most years.  This is a very nice species of peony for almost any garden, although they can be a bit pricey (ours came via an end of season sale for about 1/3 regular price but at the time (they were dormant) who knew exactly what they were.  So they were planted, and forgotten about, until the brush-like foliage poked up the following spring.  It took about 3 years for the plant to reach full size, but otherwise they have been tough and trouble free.