Paeonia Lutea Hybrids

This punchy term covers all hybrids involving any colour form of Paeonia delavayi. Initially confusing, it reflects the fact that yellow flowered P. delavayi f. lutea (once called P. lutea) was both the first and the most common form used by breeders. The American Peony Society (the international cultivar registration authority for Paeonia) use the term in this sense, and there appears to be no ambiguity in contemporary usage.

Paeonia delavayi is not a traditional ornamental in Chinese gardens, and seems not to have contributed to the various classes of hybrids in China. Since about 1900, however, it has been an important parent of hybrids with other woody peonies, to some extent in Europe and especially in North America. These hybrids’ great virtue is garden vigour, in part due to the capacity of P. delavayi for underground spread, and they are widely suited to our area. Novel and subtle colours are common where yellow flowered f. lutea is used along with a pink/purple/red parent (Burkhardt 2020). F1 hybrids are sterile or have very low fertility; most have hanging or outfacing flowers. Only relatively recently have further generations been bred; such ‘advanced generation’ hybrids have potential for greater hardiness and upfacing flowers.

P. delavayi hybrids have several distinct origins; the second (American) group is by far the most significant.

The earliest group originated in France. P. delavayi f. lutea came into cultivation towards the end of the 19th century, as seed sent from Yunnan by Delavay. Once it had flowered, it was soon crossed with Chinese mudan, at the Lemoine nursery, Nancy, and by Louis Henry at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The mudan parents were almost certainly either Central Plains varieties or European-raised seedlings derived from them (Cheng 2007; Bremer 2019). Flowers are frequently large, to 20 cm across, and range from singles to full, heavy doubles; they tend to hang amongst the leaves, especially the doubles such as Henry’s ‘Souvenir de Maxime Cornu’. The ground colour is usually yellow, variously flushed or edged with redder tones. They tend to be later flowering, May–June in Britain. These can be widely spreading, floriferous plants: a thirty year old specimen of Lemoine’s ‘L’Espérance’ grown in Somerset, UK, was 1.2 m tall and 1.5 m wide, carrying 80 to 150 flowers each year (Kelway 1954). They are well suited to much of western Europe, but are too tender for colder central parts of North America (Bremer 2019); several are still in commerce. The name P. × lemoinei was published for this group of hybrids (Rehder 1920) but we do not find this a helpful concept (for reasoning see P. × lemoinei). Rather later, Lemoine raised some important hybrids between P. delavayi f. lutea and a Japanese cultivar, ‘Yaso-okina’; three were introduced from 1935 onwards, ‘Alice Harding’, ‘Eldorado’ and ‘Mine d’Or’. They are more or less semi-double, with flowers generally more outfacing than hanging (Burkhardt 2020). These novel hybrids were not universally appreciated, however. Wister (1946)​​​​​ commented that ‘Souvenir de Maxime Cornu’ ‘looks much more like a dahlia than a peony, and I do not care much for it’. Yet another, much later French introduction, something of a one-off but with rather similar parentage, is Jean Cayeux’s ‘Hélène Martin’ (see below).

A second group arose quite independently in North America. Between about 1915 and 1953 Professor Saunders, a chemistry academic of Clinton, New York, whose given name Albert was apparently rarely used in gardening circles, raised numerous hybrids among both herbaceous and woody species (Wister 1962). Relevant here are his hybrids using P. delavayi as the seed parent, both yellow and red/pink flowered forms, and Japanese botan cultivars as pollen parents. Despite being highly selective of seedlings, Saunders introduced about 75 single and semi-double cultivars, all F1 hybrids, in a much wider range of colours than had been achieved in France, where only yellow-flowered P. delavayi had been used. Like the French varieties, the flowers tend not to be held upright (Bremer 2019). Many are still commercially available in North America; some such as ‘Argosy’, ‘Black Pirate’ and ‘High Noon’ were also distributed in Europe.

Saunders understood that to achieve hardier plants with flowers held upright, breeding had to be continued through further generations. While most of his F1s were sterile, two unregistered seedlings were not (others have since been recognised). The Greek-American artist Nassos Daphnis worked with these over many years, mainly backcrossing to Japanese cultivars, to produce a series of advanced generation hybrids with upright flowers and much higher fertility, which could then be the basis of ongoing breeding; 46 were named (Bremer 2019). Most carry the names of characters from Greek myth; many, such as ‘Hephestos’ have proved popular garden plants, especially in North America. Other American breeders such as Michigan vet David Reath, continued work with this group. Hybrids of this American lineage, both F1 and advanced generation hybrids, have been the main woody parents of the Itoh hybrids (q.v.). In Australia, Bernard & Lucy Chow of Melbourne have also crossed advanced generation hybrids to good effect, both amongst themselves and with Japanese cultivars, in particular extending the colour range towards orange (Chow & Chow 2018).

Thirdly, there are a very few hybrids between P. delavayi and P. ludlowii, notably the Irish ‘Anne Rosse’ involving a red-flowered delavayi (Adams 2010); ‘Derek Hill’ probably shares this origin (Tobin 2015), and other contemporary breeders have noted similar seedlings (Burkhardt 2008). It seems likely that P. delavayi rather than P. ludlowii has been used in Western hybrids with Chinese and Japanese cultivars because of both its earlier introduction and the rarity of P. ludlowii in North America.

We list a representative selection of better-known cultivars. For fuller listings see American Peony Society (2020) and specialist nurseries such as Solaris Farms (2020) and Pivoines Rivière (2020).