I bought a red/maroon tree peony 10 or more years ago from Wal-mart. It took it about 3 or 4 years to start blooming and has pretty reliably bloomed since then until this year. It had a couple of buds, but one got broken off in a storm and the other dried up. At about the same time I thought it was growing new branches from the base, but what arose were herbacious peony stems. Those bloomed and were hot pink single blooms with yellow anthers, unlike any I have. So are tree peonies grafted onto herbacious peony roots? That seems so weird to me, but I know I never had any other peony around the tree peony, and it's obvious that they (the 2 peonies) are connected at the root. Is this common practice in propagating tree peonies? I know I should cut off the root system part that's growing (like a grafted rose), but will it hurt if I cut enough off to save the hot pink herbacious? Or should I just remove any top growth as it appears from the roots? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Neal.
A question about tree peony grafts.
Neal, yes, most tree peonies are grafted onto herbaceous peony root stock. This makes them more affordably priced for people. When planting a tree peony one should plant it seven to eight inches deep, this is just opposite of what you do with a herbaceous peony. What you are trying to do is give the tree peony time to put out it's own roots and in time the nurse root (herbaceous peony root) will die off. Sometimes when a tree peony is planted to shallow the nurse root will send up shoots, you should cut these off as soon as they come up so they don't take nutrition away from the tree peony. You'll probably need to dig the tree peony up in the fall and replant it deeper in the ground. If this is an in-expensive tree peony I suppose at that time you could look things over and see if you can slice off some of the nurse root and plant it separately from the tree peony. How that would affect your TP I don't know, but like I said if it was an in-expensive one I'd probably experiment. ;)
Diann
Thanks Diane. Makes sense to me now. It was cheap so I may experiment.
Other questions come to mind. How do they tolerate partial shade? I'm talking about 5-6 hours of direct sun a day. I'm in a woodland environment now, so there's a lot of experimenting going on with what will grow where. I have a growing row of roses edging the berry-veggie patch (where I do have sun), all rejects from the partially shaded beds (high impact, right in front of the house).
So if partial shade is ok for TP, what vendor can I trust to get a couple of good, reliable varieties for a reasonable price? I really want a yellow or orange one, and a candy striped bi-color. Can they be found for less than $50 each for some reasonable sized ones?
Thanks in advance! I have lots of questions for any of you with Tree peony experience, so I'll stop with these for now.
Tree Peonies will tolerate partial shade very well, much better than the herbaceous. Al
Here's one I found online. Pretty much what Diann said. :)
http://www.peonies.org/cgi-bin/showfaq.cgi