2013 Peony 'Grace Root' Adventitious Bud Stem Flower

Peony 'Grace Root'
Peony 'Grace Root' definitely is a beautiful plant. This peony was hybridized by Saunders and registered in 1940. According to the registration for this plant, it is a lobata hybrid: "Single - Pink - Hybrid. Clear light salmon pink, cut shaped single. Albiflora x lobata. Lists in Bulletins 91 and 129." Peony 'Grace Root' is beautiful not only for her lovely neon coral-pink blossoms that stand out in the early peony bloom season, but also because of her rare ability to generate new plants from her roots.

Peony 'Grace Root' Plant
with Adventitious Bud/Stem Growing From Root
This curiosity is called adventitious bud development. These adventitious buds develop in an unusual place on the plant, the roots, instead of the usual location for bud development, the crown. This small plantlet can be separated from the mother plant by root division. Normal peony division would require a crown and root division to obtain a viable plant. However this new peony plantlet will develop its own crown when separated and planted out on its own.
Peony 'Grace Root' Adventitious Bud/Stem Growing From Root
This particular adventitious peony bud / plantlet is actually in its second year, and it also developed a bloom this year. It assumably benefited from still being attached to the mother plant, which allowed it to use energy from the mother's plants storage roots to develop a flower bud so quickly. When grown from seed, peonies can take 3-5 years to flower or more! I plan to separate out this adventitious bud / plantlet this fall. I'll keep you posted on how it does. I'm curious to see how well it grows, and how long it takes to make babies (adventitious buds) of its own!
Peony 'Grace Root' Flower on Adventitious Bud/Stem

2013 Companion Plants for Peonies

Peonies and Oriental Lilies
I was thinking about how lovely these oriental lilies looked next to my peonies when I decided that might be a great topic to share - companion plants for peonies. Some other plants that I like to plant near my peonies are spring bloomers like irises, if you want to get some complimentary blooms. Or if you want to add some color to accent the gorgeous green summer foliage of peonies, tall summer blooming bulbs like lilies and gladioli are perfect complements to the medium height foliage of the peonies. I like to plant the lilies in between the roots of two peonies and maybe slightly behind. This has two purposes. One to give the lilies some support with the peony foliage in front of them, and two to hide the emerging lily shoot from the deer! I can't say this works all of the time, but in my yard it does work most years! I think that's the only reason I have lilies and hostas in my yard (because I surround them with peonies and hellebores!)
Peonies and Fairy Roses
Another summer blooming option for a companion plant to peonies is roses. One of my favorites is fairy roses. They're almost like knockout roses, except miniature. They bloom for months, and have several color options. I also like to plant daylilies near my peonies, just not too close. Daylilies form large storage roots underground just like peonies. So they would definitely be in competition if planted too close. Hellebores are another great companion plant to peonies, blooming at almost the opposite time of the year when peonies are in their rest cycle of winter. Hellebores would provide nice companion foliage during the peony bloom season and while they are going dormant, and lovely blooms while peonies are still asleep. These two should not be planted too close to peonies since they develop an extensive root system. So there are lots of plants that do well in the same light and soil conditions as peonies to keep the interest and color coming all year long!
Peonies with Daylilies and Hellebores

2013 Peony Disease Stem Wilt

Peony Stem Wilt
This poor bud was so close to opening, but unfortunately it was affected by a fungus causing the peony stem to wilt. This stem was infected with botrytis blight which can affect the plant in several ways like stunted growth, Bud Blast, Spotty Foliage, and stem wilt. As you can see from the close up photo below, the infected stem is covered with small reddish black sores or spots. These spots will turn darker as they age and the infected tissue rots. These spots are the evidence of the botrytis fungal disease on the stems. Unfortunately the only thing that can be done for this problem is removal, and the sooner the better. The botrytis blight needs to be removed from the plant as soon as possible to interrupt its reproductive cycle and prevent it from creating spores that will infect next year's foliage. The stem should be pruned back to remove all of the visible blight to just before the next clean leaf on the stem. Once the infected stem segment has been removed from the peony plant, it is imperative that the diseased tissue be removed from the area by trashing it and never composting the infected foliage. Careful, consistent, and timely sanitary practices should improve the health of your plant over time. Good luck!
Close Up of Peony Stem Wilt

2013 Intersectional Peony Garden in Bloom First Year

This is an update on the progress of my newest intersectional peony garden. My original intersectional peony garden is in partial shade/partial sun. This new one is in full sun. Last summer I first started with Soil Solarization. Then I added lots of New Dirt underneath. In the fall I Planted the intersectional peonies. Since several of these peonies were moved from partial shade to full sun, it didn't take long for them to get Toasted. However all of them came back this spring, except two of the Intersectional Peonies on Ebay I'd purchased. That was kind of disappointing, but that's a lesson on trying to buy things cheap! Anyway as you can see I did get some blooms in my intersectional peony garden this year, with the star of the show being Peony 'Sonoma Amethyst' that I'd purchased from an actual peony grower, Adelman. Another beauty near the back of the bed is Peony 'White Emperor' with which I was also quite impressed. As you can see it wasn't much to look at this year, but I'm very hopeful for next year. We have had so much rain this summer, it's just amazing. I think our rainfall this is going to break a record or come close! I just checked, and our local weather report says we are more than 10 inches ahead of last year's rain totals. So it has really been wet this year so far. I don't think the plants have had any opportunities to be thirsty this year at all! So hopefully that translates into bigger and better peony plants next year!
Intersectional Peony Garden in Bloom (May 2013)


Intersectional Peony Garden in Bloom (May 2013)

2013 Southern Peony Milestones & Popular Topics

It wasn't all that long ago that I was writing about our first 1,000 visitors in one month back in January in my 2013 Southern Peony Milestones post. Well you all have done it again. Last month we had over 2,000 views in one month and this month the site has had over 20,000 views since Southern Peony's inception! Since then we've added a program to recognize the best peony performers in the southern climate, Southern Peony Best Performer. I am so happy about how far this site has come, and how it continues to grow and be a resource to the peony community everywhere. It looks like my efforts to reach out to readers all over the world by adding a translation tool to view 2013 Peony in Other Languages has certainly helped lots of people the world over find this site. I am still interested in getting questions from all of you in the US and all other countries. So if you have a Peony Question please Contact Me! Check out the current list of the Top 10 Most Popular Topics of All Time in the table below, and you can check out the Popular Topics page for an up to date list of our most popular peony topics!

Top 10 Most Popular Topics of All Time (as of 6/30/13)

1	2009 Fall Peony Foliage
2	2012 Peony 'Bartzella' Best Performer - Week 5
3	2012 Peony 'Angel Cheeks' Best Performer - Week 6
4	2012 Peony Blooms Mid Season - Week 4
5	2012 APS Peony Court of Honor Winners
6	2012 Peony Blooms Very Early to Early Mid - Weeks 1-3
7	2012 Peony Disease Bud Blast
8	2013 Intersectional Peony Catalog Price Comparisons
9	2013 Questions - Container Grown Peony Plants
10	2010 APS Grand Champion Peony - Flying Pink Saucer

Top 10 Countries by Pageviews

1	United States	11834
2	Russia	1388
3	Canada	1366
4	China	572
5	United Kingdom	476
6	Poland	387
7	Germany	245
8	Latvia	219
9	Japan	175
10	Ukraine	170