White peony flower

Flamboyant and Frilly: Peonies

Posted on by Ann Mackay

NB: A note for WordPress Reader users – you need to click on the title of the post again to see the full photograph. (Otherwise you see just a tiny section!)

Peonies are amongst the flowers that seem most feminine to me. (Irises and oriental poppies are two of the others.) Peony petals, with their crinkles and ruffles, make me think of layers of silky fabric. Their colours, which range from the pale and delicate to the rich and sensuous, reinforce that impression.

The spectacular curls and swirls of the petals and the sheer flamboyance of the large flower heads make them a pleasure to photograph. The peonies in this post were photographed in gardens I visited, but hopefully I may find a bit of space to grow one or two in the garden here. (I used to grow a couple of red peonies when I lived in Scotland. They were trouble free there, but I suspect that the much drier conditions here won’t be ideal.)

While I’m still trying to figure out how I can somehow squeeze yet more plants into my garden, I’ll make the most of the plants that I have the chance to enjoy in other people’s gardens. Being able to see flowers I don’t grow (and sometimes seeing quite unexpected ones) is a large part of the reason for garden-visiting. These two beauties certainly made me smile!

Pink peony flower
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Published by Ann Mackay

Photographer, mixed-media art adventurer and completely daft about plants.......

22 thoughts on “Flamboyant and Frilly: Peonies”

    1. It’s not the pollen, Liz. Without being able to actually handle the flower and open it up a bit, it’s hard to tell if the yellow is actually the colour of the inner petals, or whether it may be an effect of the light bouncing of the carpel at the centre (the bit that includes the ovary), which appears to have an orange colour, and off the yellow anthers.

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  2. It’s easy to see why you felt called to photograph these flowers.

    Not being a gardener, I looked up peonies and found this in Wikipedia:

    “The peony or paeony (/ˈpiːəni/) is a flowering plant in the genus Paeonia (/piːˈoʊniə/), the only genus in the family Paeoniaceae (/piːˌoʊniˈeɪsi.iː/). Peonies are native to Asia, Europe, and Western North America. Scientists differ on the number of species that can be distinguished, ranging from 25 to 40, although the current consensus describes 33 known species. The relationships between the species need to be further clarified.

    Most are herbaceous perennial plants 0.25–1 metre (1–3 ft) tall, but some are woody shrubs 0.25–3.5 metres (1–11 ft) tall. They have compound, deeply lobed leaves and large, often fragrant flowers, in colors ranging from purple and pink to red, white or yellow, in late spring and early summer. The flowers have a short blooming season, usually only 7–10 days.

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    1. They are gorgeous flowers, but that short blooming time is their big disadvantage. It probably makes us treasure them all the more when they are in flower though! (And they have attractive leaves.)

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  3. Every time I see peonies, I remember my grandmother calling them ‘Pine-ees,” and I pine just a little for those glorious flowers. Like lilacs and forsythia, they’re in my heart forever, even though I couldn’t grow them here even if I had the land for them.

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    1. Hi Syd! I can actually see your name this time, so maybe the problem is sorted? I hope so! Thank you for the comment…it’s good to be able to ‘chat’ with you again. 🙂

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      1. Hi Ann – I think I had to log out of my WordPress account and then log in again which actually “unlogged” me from my own site but it showed up on your site. Not sure why it giving me so many problems! Still enjoying the blog!

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      2. Hmm, Syd, you’re back to being ‘Someone’. Hope that means that you are at least logged back into your own site again. I don’t understand WP at times! (Glad you’re still enjoying the blog! 🙂 )

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  7. We love our peonies and wish they stayed around a bit longer but they only last a few days in freshness. We have both herbaceous and tree varieties. You can stop by and visit them anytime, Ann. 😀

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  8. They are definitely flamboyant, Ann, but not all are frilly, at least not the varieties that happen to grow in our garden. I like peonies, but they are short-lived and always lose their petals so quickly. Do you have that problem?

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