Botany Photo of the Day

This is the second in a series of five photographs featuring plants showcased in UBC Botanical Garden's newly-released book: “The Jade Garden - New and Notable Plants from Asia”.

I'd like to mention a couple things before I go into the comments for today's plant. First, it'd almost be impossible for me to write what you are reading with the book excerpts, so I hope you don't get too spoiled reading them! Second, immediately after the series on “The Jade Garden”, Sunday's featured plant (if all goes well - I haven't taken the photograph yet) will be the second plant so far on Botany Photo of the Day that has only been seen by a few people outside of Asia in flower until this year. Quite a coup!

On to today's entry, with a photograph that was taken in early May. Paeonia rockii, as written by Peter Wharton in “The Jade Garden”:

“The genus Paeonia comes from the Greek name Paeon, the physician of the Gods and the discoverer of medicinal properties. This shrub has great popular distinction for its bold, distinctive foliage, vigorous form and exquisite flowers of grand proportions. The tree peonies in general and this species in particular have been especially esteemed by ancient and modern Chinese societies; they symbolize love, affection, and feminine beauty, as well as having a notable position in Chinese pharmacopoeias. This species is known as the zi ban mudan (the purple-blotched tree peonies) in China.

The specific epithet acknowledges Joseph Rock (1884-1962), the Austro-American explorer, geographer, plant hunter and linguist. The introduction of this plant to the West was fittingly romantic, with a figure no less passionate than Reginald Farrer first describing its charms as “the huge expanded goblets of Paeonia Moutan, refulgent as pure snow and fragrant as heavenly Roses” (Farrer, 1917). Farrer saw this plant in southern Gansu in 1914, but Rock introduced it into Western cultivation in 1926. His discovery of the seed plant in the Choni (Jone) Lamasery in southwest Gansu led to seed being sent to the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, with seedlings eventually being sent to growers in the United States and Europe.

Our plants appear to be the typical American form of Paeonia rockii originating from Reath's Nursery in Michigan. The distinct English form, originating from Highdown Garden in Kent is another seedling raised from the original Rock introduction.

This imposing shrub can grow into a huge sprawling specimen 2.4m tall by 3m across with a distinctive bronzing to the young leaves before they assume a delightful bluish cast. The foliage contrasts superbly with up to 50 blooms on mature shrubs. The leaves are 2- or 3-pinnate with 17 to 33 leaflets. The leaflets are variable, ranging from lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, entire leaves to mostly ovate-orbicular and lobed leaves (2-11cm long by 1.5-4.5cm wide). The leaf is glabrous on the upper surface and slightly tomentose on the undersides, sometimes locally dense along the leaf veins.

The solitary, captivating flowers (13-19cm) are borne terminally with 3 leaf-like bracts and sepals. The flower consists of 10 white petals, showing conspicuous dark purple blotches at the base. The filaments and flower disc are pale yellow. Flowering usually occurs in May. The fruits are delightfully reminiscent of a jester's hat, consisting of five oblong, densely yellow, tomentose, spindle-like follicles that split to reveal two rows of jet-black seeds.

The Qin Ling is the core area for this king of flowers -- from the Loess Plateau area of Shaanxi-Gansu border, to the northern slopes of the sacred Taibai Shan, and finally to the diverse forests of Hubei's famous Shennongjia Forest District. This species grows in a wide range of ecological conditions, including sunlit openings in deciduous broad-leaf forests, margins of Pinus armandii forest and dense scrub, shady north-facing slopes and limestone crags (Wang, 1961). Forms with red and pink petals occur throughout the shrub's native range, so there are rich opportunities for further flower selection.”