My earliest memory of Peonies is of the ones in our backyard when I was growing up. Every spring my mom would preemptively place the cages in empty spots exactly where the plants would emerge -- which I thought was magic future vision, not yet understanding the concept of "Perennial." Then when they were just starting to bloom I'd "help" her cut the flowers to put in vases, holding the pendulous stalks as she handed them to me before we brought them inside to enjoy the fragrance. And the ants. There were always ants crawling all over the flowers, and no matter how much I tried to shake them off, several always made it inside. According to my mom, the peonies needed the ants because they helped open the blossoms, and for that reason, we should welcome them and not squash them. I actually believed that for the next 20 years. Turns out the ants are attracted to the nectar the blossoms produce and show up to feast, not to do manual labor.
[That's not the worst example of my gullibility. When I was 6, my then 9 year old (and newly enlightened) brother told me to tell the neighborhood bully to go f**k himself. I asked what that meant, and he fibbed, "oh, it just means take your clothes off." Figuring that was pretty harmless, I complied. For the next 10 years, I wondered why that bully tried so hard to make my life miserable. But I digress.]
So I've learned a thing or two about peonies (and other things!) over the years. I owe some of my education to Cricket Hill Garden, a nursery entirely devoted to rare and unusual peonies. Their plantings are heaven on earth for a few weeks each spring for anyone even remotely fond of these amazing perennials. It was there that I fell in love with Chinese Tree Peonies.
Nothing droopy about Chinese Tree Peonies
As their name suggests, they are native to China, and unlike the herbaceous variety, they have woody stems that don't die back in the fall. They are longer lived and can grow to tree height in their native habitat. But the major difference is that they carry their blossoms proudly upright so you can see and smell them, rather than droopy habit of the herbaceous kind (probably from the weight of all those ants) where you have to lie under them to see the flowers, hence the need for caging them so they don't hit the ground.
And it's a good thing the blossoms are upright because everything about them is amazing from the moment the buds first appear through the too-short two-week window in which they're fully open. The two varieties we have are called Phoenix White and the more fancifully named Gold Sand in a Black Ocean. The photos of the latter never really capture the true color, which is so intense that it screws up the exposure. One of these day's I'll figure out how to fix that, but for the time being, these are close enough...
The only downside to these luscious perennials are that the bloom time is very short. So as with veggies that have a short season, I tend to over indulge in them while I can. And invariably, we get a hard rain about halfway through their bloom which leaves them looking sorry and bedraggled. True to form, we had a 24 hour deluge yesterday, just as the peonies hit their peak. In today's brilliant sunshine, they're a bit battered and a little worse for the wear. But they're not droopy. Never droopy.
