Bloom from the peony that came with the house.
The peony bush in question.
My goal for this week has been to conclusively identify the peony that came with our house. It hasn’t been as easy as I’d hoped. Part of the problem is that I lack knowledge of the correct flower-describing terminology, which makes using the search function on HelpMeFind’s peony page more challenging and less productive than it should be. Is my bloom pink? Yellow? Double? An anemone? This was easier with the roses, as I had a borrowed rose book in front of me to provide the basics with regard to double blooms and such.
Nonetheless, by blundering around the web for a while and poring over pages of results from a Google images search on ‘peony,’ I’ve come up with two possible matches for my plant. Our house was built in 1936, and the peony was likely planted by the first owner; at the least, I’m quite sure it wasn’t planted by the most recent owners, post-1983. I first decided I had a Lady Alexandra Duff peony, based on the bloom description and the year of introduction in the United States (1932). Upon further looking, though, I’m not as certain. Our plant definitely has drooping blooms, and quite a bit more yellow in the blooms than other photos of Lady Alexandra Duff plants.
My new theory is that I have a Bridal Veil peony, introduced at an unknown point prior to 1958 and still for sale by Kelway’s. Of course, I’ve been unable to find any more information than that, and am wondering if this is an alternate name for the variety. I would love to learn the year of introduction and more of a history of the plant, so if any peony experts are reading this, let me know what you think!
We don’t seem to have many peonies in this area, so I’m comPLETEly jealous of all these east-coast peonies on my friends’ blogs. Yours is gorgeous; sorry I’m no help in ID’ing it.
Believe it or not I was looking for the same exact peony. Our neighbors (when I was a kid) had them. I’m going to guess that she planted them in the 50’s. Every year they would come up I would look at them and just long to have one, but I never picked one – not ever. I guess I was a good kid, but what a temptation. The link you provided does indeed have a couple that come real close if not exact. Thank you much for that link. We have an expensive (but really good) nursery here in Minnesota where I might catch sight of one. Because of the cost of peonies, especially really different ones like yours, I like getting the bare root. If the expensive nursery has one I would spring for the bucks for it.
It is a really great one, I’m happy to have it (and nervous about doing anything that might disturb it). It’s helpful to know that it might date from the 1950s; the roses that we have seem to be varieties popular in the 40s, so I wondered if it was from a similar time period.
Still no conclusive ID, but I keep hoping one day I’ll run across a peony buff who will just know immediately. In the meantime, the all-pink ones that I adopted from a neighbor are blooming this year so I’ll have a new challenge figuring those out.
When the lady who planted the peonies moved away, my mother snuck into that yard and dug up one of the peony clumps. I’m not sure if she was ever able to get them to grow or not. I’ll have to ask her. I think you could get a bare root from your peonies and try planting it where you might like to have another clump of them. I have tons of gardening books and will look to see what you’d have to do to accomplish that. I’ve read stuff on the net about peonies not liking to be moved, but I think that’s if you move the whole plant. I think the moved peony reacts in way that it might not bloom for 1-3 years. I want to have my peonies in other areas of my yard, but I want to see how they grow first in my garden. I’m planning to leave the main peonies in the garden, but take bare root to start them where I will want them for show. I plan on having a few of those beautiful flowers cut, in a vase, and in my house once I have enough of them too. They attract ants, but they need those ants to open the peony blooms. Just when you think you’ve got a bloom cut and on the table – out crawls an ant, lol!
Just thought I’d let you see one I just purchased on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=230324756041
It’s not exactly like yours, but it sure looks like it’s going to be beautiful. I just planted the bare root for it. Had I found this one at the expensive nursery located near us, it would have been a $35 peony – easily.
I believe I have this same peony…that just got it’s first flowers yesterday. In Indiana. Does the middle of the flower kind of pop out from the center? There are so many that look similar. But this is a beautiful flower. Kinda looks like the couronne and they are not sure when it was first started. Also kinda looks like the Lavon (1993) Peonyparadise.com will send a great catalog of peonies..really helpful for identifying too.
Mine has been blooming for over a week now (I would say it’s near the end of its bloom period) in the DC area (much hotter than Indiana this time of year!). Yes, the center does kind of pop up, with an almost flat ring of pale yellow petals around the base, thick cream petals as the mass, and then cream streaked with fuchsia right in the center. It has a lovely scent, too. I’ve assumed that it was an older variety simply because it was buried under overgrowth when we moved in (and I know that the people who owned the house from 1983 onward pretty much neglected the yard).
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