Have you ever visited a botanical garden on a warm spring day and marveled at tulips in a rainbow of colors, with shapes ranging from cups to stars, contrasting striations, and ruffled edges?Now’s your chance to bring a taste of that awes
12.06.2023 - 01:10 / gardenerspath.com / Nan Schiller
How to Plant and Grow the Classic Perennial Peony Paeonia spp.For an ornamental highlight in late spring to early summer, fill your garden beds and borders with the luscious blossoms of perennial peony (Paeonia spp.).
The Paeonia genus is the only one in the Paeoniaceae family of plants. There are 33 species and 15 subspecies native to Asia, Europe, and North America.
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Many are suited to home garden cultivation in USDA Hardiness Zones 3-8, and are available in shades of pink, purple, red, white, and yellow.
In this article, you will learn how to cultivate the peony in your landscape.
Let’s get started!
Cultivation and HistoryThe origin of the name “peony” is the topic of an ancient Greek myth.
Versions of the story vary, but the gist is that Asclepius, god of medicine, had a student named Paeon who outshined him by obtaining a healing root at the request of the goddess Leto.
Envious, Asclepius planned to murder Paeon, but instead, Zeus turned him into a flower called Paeonia.
In the Middle Ages, the peony held a place of honor in Asia and Europe, where it was prized for its use in culinary and medicinal applications, and its beauty as an ornamental specimen.
Its voluptuous form came to symbolize affluence, beauty, good fortune, and integrity, and was frequently represented in the arts and literature.
By the 18th century, the flower was under cultivation in Japan, and by the 20th, horticulturist Toichi Itoh crossed an herbaceous species with a tree species to create a third type of plant, the “intersectional.”
This unique hybrid made its way to the United States, and at about the same time in France, breeder Victor
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