This is a picture from several years ago of a tree peony I used to have in my garden. When it flowered it produced huge bomb shaped flowers with beautiful rippled petals. Unfortunately, it only managed to bring these flowers to bloom about one year out of every three. It always produced several buds but before blooming, some or all of them would turn dak and shrivel away. I never figured out exactly why. The closest explanation I could come up with was that , since it was the earliest of my peonies to produce the buds and many years they would suffer below zero temperatures before they could open. I'm still not entirely satisfied with that explanation but, in any case, last year I finally gave up on it and pulled it out. Makes me sad however when I com across a picture like this that reminds me of how glorious it was, on those few occasions when it did get a bloom to open fully.
