Distinguishing all kinds of peonies

I like growing as many kinds of peonies as possible so I've grown them from seed as well as purchased many plants to get together a nice collection. I'm not even too concerned about the names anymore, but I am able to tell their age, and whether they are herbaceous, itoh or tree peonies just by their appearance. I'm only selecting no more than 7 of each type as it would be too long of a blog post to post hundreds of photos.

Here are some 1st year tree peonies which are just starting to come out this year. They usually make no more than 1-3 leaves on the 1st year while there has been a case where I've gotten 6 leaves before. These have just started coming out after a good week of rain and temperatures slightly above freezing.

Taking down the greenhouse for spring 2013

This year, spring came kind of late, but this weekend, it is finally in the 60s with a forecast that looks OK. I decided to take off the greenhouse that has been up since 23 September of last year. These plants have been under a greenhouse for 6 1/2 months, but they are still looking pretty good. I keep mostly bamboos in this thing.

It took about an hour to move all the stuff out and clean up the area.

Peony seedlings getting ready to take off

If you have been following my posts, you would know that I'm obsessed with these plants, especially when they are actively growing. We have had unusually cold temperatures for the past couple months, but it looks like the soil is finally starting to thaw out as temperatures are supposed to moderate by March.

I'm seeing that many of these are clearly tree peony seedlings, but some of them could be herbaceous or even intersectional (itoh) peony seedlings as these come from various sources with different leaf shapes. 

Here are some pictures. Enjoy.

Removing the tarp to take out the peonies and bamboos 2013

It looks like the threat of a major freeze into the teens is diminishing, and a lot of plants are starting to wake up so I decided to take off the tarp for my potted plants.

Here's the tarp back in February under 1ft of snow

Some tree peonies waking up very early in 2013

This year some of my tree peonies, mainly the ones that sprouted last year are waking up very early, even earlier than they did last year so I hope they know what they are doing. I do have a few set to sprout this year which are coming up early however those are not nearly as developed as these.

These are mainly Chinese tree peony seedlings. 

December peony buds, and buds for other plants 2012

With November and early December, temperatures will often fall withing the ideal vernalization zone of 40F to 45F which causes many plants to develop their buds in preparation for spring. For my climate, vernalization usually occurs once in the late fall, and then again by early spring as the plants produce the growth hormones needed for flowering, and overall vigor for the following year.

Here are some pictures of the tree & itoh peonies. The buds for the herbaceous peonies still haven't popped out of the soil yet so I didn't take pictures of those. They don't look like much now, but some of these may have enough energy stored from this year to produce flowers next year. They usually start swelling more by the beginning of March when daylight gets noticeably longer and temperatures start to rise.

Here are just a few of my tree/ itoh peony buds. It would be a very long post if I posted pictures of every one of them.

Growing Ensete Ventricosum Maurelii by the window

I decided to get a jump start on my Ensete Maurelii so that I can have bigger plants to bring outside by the spring time. I purchased these guys 3 weeks ago, and they have since put out a couple of leaves. The only thing I hope for is that their pseudo-stems stay healthy and strong, and giving them light from a south facing window will hopefully be enough.

There are 3 plants total.

November 13th 2012: They looked kind of skinny when they came out of the box.