Paeonia delavayi
| Paeonia delavayi | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Core eudicots |
| Order: | Saxifragales |
| Family: | Paeoniaceae |
| Genus: | Paeonia |
| Species: | P. delavayi |
| Binomial name | |
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Paeonia delavayi Franch. |
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Paeonia delavayi is a low woody shrub belonging to the peonies, that is endemic to China. The vernacular name in China is 滇牡丹 (dian mu dan), which means "Yunnan peony". In English it is sometimes called Delavay's tree peony. It mostly has red brown to yellow, nodding flowers from mid May to mid June. The light green, delicate looking leaves consist of many segments, and are alternately arranged on new growth.
Paeonia delavayi is a deciduous hairless shrub of ¼-1¾ m high. Plants have creeping stolons and the roots are thick because they are fused together. It mainly reproduces by growing into large clones like this. Young twigs are light green, or tinged purple, rarely branching, erect, generally on top of perennial, stick-like, grayish to light brown stems. In lower plants, woody parts may not be present above ground. Like all diploid peonies, it has ten chromosomes (2n=10).
The leaves are arranged alternately around the stem. In the lower leaves the leaf stalk is 10-15 cm long and the leaf blade is oval in outline, 15-30 cm long and 10-22 cm wide, twice compounded or very deeply incised, first into three to eleven leaflets, themselves deeply divided or lobed into two to eleven secondary lobes (this is called biternate). These are linear to linear-lanceolate in shape and have an entire margin or incidentally may have a few teeth. Usually each lower leaf has between twenty five and one hundred segments (full range 17 to 312). The width of the leaf segments is ½-2¾ cm. Higher along the stem leaves becoming smaller with fewer leaflets and segments.
As usual in peonies, there is a gradation between leaves, bracts and sepals. One to five bracts defined as those immediately below the calyx, have various shapes, ranging from incised and leaf-like to entire and sepal-like. Sepals are rounded or triangular-rounded, mostly green, but sometimes with a pink inside, dark red or purple. They have a much broader base and a smaller, narrower, rounded or suddenly pointed (or mucronate) dark green tip. The number of bracts and sepals together varies up to 10 or 11, sometimes forming a less or more conspicuous involucre.
The nodding flowers open from mid May to mid June, are sometimes single but usually two or three together on a branch, one at the end and the others in the axil of the leaves. The color of the petals also varies between and within populations from red, dark red, or dark purple-red, mostly in the northeast the range, and yellow either or not with a dark red spot at the base towards the South and West, and sometimes petals may be yellow with a red margin, orange, green-yellow, or white. The number of petals ranges from four to thirteen. Between 25 and 160 stamens have yellow, pale red, red, or dark red filaments topped by yellow, orange, red, or purple anthers. Although flowers with red brown petals usually have red to purple filaments and anthers, both filaments and anthers can also be yellow in such flowers. The fleshy disk at the base of the carpels is short, ring-shaped or forms a short cylinder 1-3 mm high, with teeth, green, yellowish, yellow, red, or dark red in color. The disk may secrete nectar which gives off a scent. There are mostly two to four rarely up to eight carpels. The ovary is mostly green, but sometimes purple, is topped by a yellow-green, yellow, red, or purple-red stigma, and contains seven to seventeen ovules in each carpel. These develop into fruits (so-called follicles) which are long ovoid in shape, 2-3½ × 1-1½ cm, which are brown when ripe in August, and contain between one and six brown-black seeds each.
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Wikipedia