09/20/01

BY VALERIE SUDOL
STAR-LEDGER STAFF

Symbol of remembrance, they bloom aptly around Memorial Day, when the loveliness of spring is at its peak. Named for the Greek physician Paeon, who used them to treat battle wounds of the gods, they signify healing. Planted along the path to your entry, they are said to keep evil from your door.

If this lore is not mere whimsy, but a reflection of human hopes, peonies may be a flower for our own stricken day. A knobby root, settled in the soil this fall, will almost certainly reward the faithful with blossoms almost too beautiful to be real next spring -- and the next and the next. Longer lived than many a tree, peonies can endure for a century or more.

These are among the oldest plants cultivated for their flowers and for the healing properties of their tuberous roots and shiny dark seeds. In China, where records mentioning this flower date to 600 B.C., peonies were known as "the King of Flowers," and often portrayed with the phoenix, an icon of life arising from ashes, triumphant.

The genus includes about 30 species, but the two chief divisions are the herbaceous peonies, soft-stemmed plants that die back to the ground in winter, and "tree" peonies, shrubs that have a persistent woody framework. The former are an indispensable favorite of the cottage garden; the latter, perhaps less well known until recently, are rapidly gaining fans for their durability and easy care.

Once established, they are drought resistant, and rarely need special attention unless dry conditions persist. And -- of special interest to New Jersey gardeners -- they are seldom bothered by rabbits or deer.

"Peonies are an old-fashioned flower, healthy and vigorous, that seldom fail, even with neglect," says Roy Klehm, whose Song Sparrow Perennial Farm in Avalon, Wis., has been breeding herbaceous peonies for four generations. "Everyone's grandma had a peony somewhere, and gardeners today recognize their virtues as a garden specimen and as a cut flower."

It was for the cut-flower trade that the Klehms originally bred peonies, focusing on cultivars producing blooms in clear colors that opened well and took up water readily, assuring long life in the vase.

Even in the heart of the Depression, Klehm peonies fetched a good price, Roy Klehm's father told him. While the company has backed out of the florist trade in favor of garden hybrids, Klehm says the peony remains strong in the worldwide cut-flower market, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, where peonies are available in November.

While they are highly sought after in places like Australia, Burma and San Francisco, peonies can only thrive in cold-winter areas, since they need a period of dormancy to flower.

Herbaceous peonies are native to Europe, Turkey and Asia Minor, and Siberia, northern China and Tibet. Peony officianalis, the pink European species, was already well known in the Middle Ages. Peony lactiflora, a white type later introduced from Asia, is believed to be the ancestor of many garden peonies known today, when the number of available cultivars top 3,000.

Tree peonies figured in Chinese history from ancient times, when they were coveted by emperors and nobles as a symbol of wealth and prosperity.

They were introduced to Japan by Buddhist missionaries, and have undergone continuous, intensive breeding there. Hybridizing in China, meanwhile, was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution, when gardens were tilled under for crops, but has resumed in recent decades. Tree peonies didn't reach North America until sometime in the late 1700s, shortly after the first shipment of these plants reached Kew Gardens in London.

Where the Klehms have made herbaceous peonies part of their history, naming new varieties for cherished family members, Michael Hsu's family has a fresh affiliation with the national flower of their Chinese homeland. Hsu and his father, C.K. Hsu, were pharmaceutical consultants who expanded their business interests to mainland China as markets there opened to the West.

About three years ago, the family bought a 54 acre farm near Quakertown, Pa., part of the original land grant to William Penn. They wanted to use the fertile acreage for something productive.

"Somehow, I couldn't see myself raising corn or soy," says Michael Hsu with a shrug. "And my mother wanted flowers."

The Hsus began importing Chinese tree peonies, which today grow in neat rows on the rolling farmstead, a cash crop with a certain cachet. Peonyland, as the farm is now known, already is among the largest growers of tree peonies in the United States, with 600 varieties and nearly 60,000 plants in the ground.

"We've got a farm in China, too, where we work with Chinese experts who are trying to retrieve the many cultivars lost during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution," says Hsu. "We're already making our own introductions, including five patented plants we think will do especially well in American climates."

One of those is 'Emerald on a Lavender Sea,' a gorgeous blossom of white and pale lilac crowned by a prominent green center. Where herbaceous peonies have market-worthy names like 'Scarlet O'Hara,' 'Whopper' and 'Pink Jitterbug,' Hsu's tree peonies retain their more elusive Chinese descriptives, translated literally into English. Picture the flowers of 'Silver and Red, Perfectly Matched,' or 'Phoenix White.'

Peonyland made quite a stir at this year's Philadelphia Flower Show, when the Hsu family managed to force 300 tree peonies into bloom for their display -- a horticultural feat never before done so successfully. The plants were cosseted in the upper floor of a barn "and we prayed a lot," Hsu said.

Both herbaceous and tree peonies have flowers in several different forms: single, semi-double, double, anemone and "bomb" types with a round, powder-puff pouf sitting atop a collar of silky petals. Colors range from purest white through soft pink, delicate lavender, vivid red, purple, maroon and nearly black. You can get pretty much anything but blue, which doesn't have a genetic foothold in the species.

"In the '50s and '60s, the choicest flower color was white," says Klehm.

There's 'Bowl of Cream' and 'Bridal Gown,' created by his father, Carl G. Klehm, and Roy Klehm's own 'Princess Bride,' 'Fringed Ivory' and 'Moon over Barrington,' all crisp in their pristine white splendor. Klehm the younger, who now works with his son Kit, also has bred some lovely blends like 'Silver Dawn Mix,' which bears flowers in a delicate palette of cream, apricot, pink and soft yellow, and pink-and-white blossoms with unusual, twisted petals like 'Twitterpated' and 'Cherry Luau' that he developed with William Krekler.

"There's just a tremendous variety in color and flower styles," says Klehm. "You couldn't ask me to name a favorite."

Beyond differences in flower form, most herbaceous peonies have a pleasing, glossy green foliage that emerges from the ground in spring a rich maroon, and returns to that dark, bass note before dying off in fall. An unusual type is the lovely fernleaf peony, Peony tenuifolia, which has very finely divided leaves and is among the first to bloom. Klehm's hybrid cultivar, the red 'Early Scout,' took the American Peony Society's Gold Medal this year -- an honor he mentions in an off-handed manner, although it is the highest accolade a peony can win.

Song Sparrow Farm also offers a more limited selection of tree peonies bred by American hybridizers, including those of the noted breeder Arthur Saunders, a chemistry professor at Hamilton College in New York early in the century. These draw on both Chinese and Japanese sources.

There have even been crosses made between herbaceous peonies and tree peonies. The Itoh hybrids, as they are known, were developed in Tokyo, with the original transfer of pollen made in 1948, creating viable seeds that didn't produce a blooming plant until the mid-1960s. These are herbaceous in habit, but bear the massive flowers of the tree peony.

Today, breeding fever is centering on some of the species tree peonies -- those found growing wild in nature, rather than man-made cultivars. The Hsus are especially interested in Peony rockii, a hardy mountain type that could introduce new qualities into the gene pool. With so many hybrids and varieties known through history and still being developed in modern times, it's small wonder that the first mission of the American Peony Society upon its establishment in 1904 was to bring taxonomy and classification of the species into some kind of order.

Of course, gardeners needn't worry about anything more than choosing a herbaceous or tree peony that suits their fancy, since both are hardy and relatively easy to grow. Herbaceous types reach a maximum of 30 to 36 inches, while tree peonies reach an ultimate height of 4 or 5 feet. Tree peonies generally bloom first, during the first two weeks of May, with herbaceous peonies following in the latter part of the month.

Herbaceous peonies are less expensive, generally running $15 to $25 for roots of blooming size. Tree peonies, like most shrubs, are a bit more dear, with prices starting at $30 and averaging perhaps $50, but they can come as high as $300 for rare specimens, Hsu advises.

The two kinds of peonies can be planted together, providing a long season of bloom. Herbaceous types are probably better mixers, finding a congenial place among other spring bloomers in the perennial border, while tree peonies, somewhat more dramatic, can stand alone as a specimen plant.

Herbaceous kinds die away completely in winter, leaving you nothing to look at. Tree types leave behind their shrubby framework, which, if you believe Roy Klehm, is something -- but not much.

"They're a little on the stark and ugly side, but their metamorphosis is fast and exciting, and they quickly come into their own," he says. "If you're trying to decide between the two types, have some of each."