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Down the Garden Path: Your peonies may have known your great-grandmother · Kendall County News - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Down the garden path. I your paeonies may have known
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  Speaker 1: your great grandmother. Written by Ka Trumper and University of
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  Speaker 1: Illinois Extension. This article is being read by an automated
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  Speaker 1: voice brought to you by Everlett. Do you have old paeonies?
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  Speaker 1: My pe andies have been passed down through five generations,
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  Speaker 1: great grandmother to grandmother, to mother, to me to my daughter.
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  Speaker 1: They are called legacy or heritage paeonies. Plants that have
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  Speaker 1: a family history possibly move from family farms to homes,
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  Speaker 1: preserving a legacy. Your paeonies and mine may also be
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  Speaker 1: what are called hairloom paeonies. Mine is lady Anna word
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  Speaker 1: of mouth no DNA, introduced by the French in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty six. Two other popular hairloom varieties are Sarah Bernhardt
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  Speaker 1: and Duchesse de Namur. These are cultivars that can live
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  Speaker 1: for more than one hundred years. They are fragrant, reliable,
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  Speaker 1: and tough. For my great grandmother procured her long lived peonies,
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  Speaker 1: they had already logged in impressive history. Paeonies get their
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  Speaker 1: start sometime before the Elis century. Chinese breeders domesticated wild paeonies,
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  Speaker 1: including tree paeonies and bread herbaceous paeonies, those we now
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  Speaker 1: know as garden paeonies. The breeding was not so much
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  Speaker 1: for their beauty and fragrance, but for the medicinal properties
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  Speaker 1: of their roots. Various medicines have been made from paeony
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  Speaker 1: roots for more than two thousand years to treat inflammation,
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  Speaker 1: high blood pressure, and epilepsy. Then herbaceous paeonies, which we
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  Speaker 1: recognize as common garden peonies, gained popularity in China for
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  Speaker 1: their beauty and fragrance. Tree paeonies were popular in the
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  Speaker 1: arts and became a symbol of status and nobility. Chinese
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  Speaker 1: breeders created unique paeonies, and by the sixteenth century there
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  Speaker 1: were more than thirty named cultivars on the road and
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  Speaker 1: over the seas. Herbaceous paeonies were imported to Europe in
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  Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds. Wrench were the most interested, seeing
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  Speaker 1: their value as ornamentals. Interests spread throughout Europe, Northeastern America,
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  Speaker 1: then on to the Prairie States in Canada by eighteen fifty.
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  Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty there were over ninety registered paeony breeders
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  Speaker 1: in North America. Now in North America you can find
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  Speaker 1: herbaceous paeonies, tree paeonies and hybrids of the two. The
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  Speaker 1: common garden herbaceous paeony Pony lactiflora, is available in a
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  Speaker 1: number of flower forms and colors. These days, DNA testing
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  Speaker 1: is available to verify your cultivar and one myth I'd
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  Speaker 1: like to bust. When your paeony buds are good sized,
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  Speaker 1: look a little closer, you will most likely see ants
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  Speaker 1: crawling on them. Have you ever heard that ants help
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  Speaker 1: the buds open? While this isn't quite true, it is
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  Speaker 1: an example of mutualism, a relationship between a plant and
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  Speaker 1: insect where both enjoy benefits. The buds have a sticky,
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  Speaker 1: sweet substance on them, which the ants eat. The presence
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  Speaker 1: of the ants discourages pests like aphids that might harm
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  Speaker 1: the paeony, so everybody wins. For more about paeonies, visit
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  Speaker 1: any of these sources about peonies, The American Peenie Society,
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  Speaker 1: Oh the Beloved Peony, It's Peony Time, o pe Andy History.
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  Speaker 1: K Truemper is a certified Master Gardener and Master Naturalist
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  Speaker 1: volunteer with University of Illinois Extension, serving DuPage, Caine, and
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  Speaker 1: Kendall Counties.