Woodland peony

It's a good colorful garden this week because TPP's tree peonies and the fern-leafed peony are all in flower. TPP has blogged about his tree peonies before (here, here, here, here) and the fern-leafed peony too (here and here), and it would not bother him to do another as he isn't tired of them or proud. But lurking in a shady area are several less gaudy peonies that are native to forest communities (Paeonia japonica) so they are shade-loving herbaceous perennials and they grow rather like a trillium and are in that size range. They were slow to establish but now seem to be quite tough and some seedlings are showing up even though it usually takes two years for the seeds to germinate.  The flowers are 2-3 inches in diameter and white; growing above a colony of wild ginger they are utterly charming.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Fern-leafed Peony

Several years ago a long-time employee of TPP's favorite neighborhood garden shoppe was offering us several perennials at significant discounts rather than trying to over winter them and sell them the next spring.  And three fern-leafed peonies (Peonia tenuifolia) were among the lot, at least 3 pots labelled as such. They were a bit slow to get started but now all three produce 2 foot high mounds of very finely dissected foliage.  Their single flowers are bright scarlet red, one at the end of each aerial shoot, and they are the earliest of the peonies, even beating the tree peonies by a week.  Unfortunately, while very handsome, the flowering display does not last long, but then again, few flowering displays do.  The foliage remains attractive enough, so do think of putting these into a middle position is a partly shady bed.  They particularly look great in the morning sun.  Actually just checking the data, and our Japanese peonies flowered at the same time, a woodland, herbaceous perennial.  Something tells TPP he's done this as a FFF before, but so what.   

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.