National Beauty and Heavenly Fragrance: the Chinese Peony

A symbol of wealth and honour, peonies are known as the King of Flowers and have been cultivated in China for millennia. Like many traditional plants of the Chinese garden, they were originally cultivated for medicinal purposes and are mentioned in the Shennong Bencao Jing, an ancient materia medica written circa 200-250 AD, recording oral traditions dating back much further. Some records indicate they were cultivated as far back as the Xia (the possibly mythical first dynasty, 2000-1766 BC).

Before the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) not much distinction was made between herbaceous peonies, shaoyao, and tree peonies, mudan, which were simply called tree shaoyao. Paintings from around 400 AD depict peonies in the background, showing that they have been cultivated as ornamentals for at least 1600 years. By the Sui dynasty, 581-618 AD, individual varieties were being recorded, and twenty boxes of peonies were sent as tribute to the Emperor from Hubei. In the early Tang dynasty, peonies were an imperial flower, only permitted to be grown in imperial gardens. They soon spread, however, and were planted in temple and monastery gardens. In the 8th century they were introduced to Japan by a Buddhist monk.

There is a legend that the Tang Empress Wu Zetian visited a garden in the winter. Nothing was in flower, so she ordered all the plants to bloom. The next day, despite the snow, all the plants had obeyed the Empress and flowered, except the peony. Enraged, she banished it from the capital to Luoyang, where it bloomed profusely. Subject to the vicissitudes of war and changing dynasties, Luoyang has been the capital of China’s peony industry ever since.

The first monograph on peonies, written in 1034 AD, described 24 double and semi-double varieties. The large double ‘Thousand-Petalled’ varieties were the most popular, new varieties costing as much as a hundred bushels of rice. At least two of the varieties, Yao’s Yellow and Wei Purple, are still in cultivation. By the 1800s, a single plant could cost 1000 coins.

In 1655, English visitors from the East India Company saw peonies in Beijing and sent accounts home. More than a hundred years later, in 1787, Joseph Banks asked the Company’s representative in China, Alexander Duncan, to send plants to Kew. The Kew plants have not survived but a plant from that first introduction was moved from Duncan’s own garden to the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens and can still be seen there.

Further introductions through the late 18th and early 19th century culminated in Robert Fortune’s third expedition, 1848-1851, when he obtained 30 of the best tree peonies available in Shanghai, as well as herbaceous peonies for grafting. The latter half of the 19th century saw hundreds of peony varieties offered for sale by nurseries across Europe. Kelways nursery in the U.K., famous for peonies, dates from this period.

The peony was the national flower of China until 1928, when the government of the Republic of China replaced it with the plum blossom instead, which was a symbol of resilience in hard times, and not as closely associated with China’s imperial past. The People’s Republic of China has no official national flower, though the peony consistently tops polls held to choose one, by a huge margin.