THE FLEETING FANCY OF THE TREE PEONY (2024)

Anyway, the tree peony is blooming now. The plant loves leaf mold, good drainage, preferably on a slope or in a raised bed, and shelter, especially on the east side. Often in the "spring" -- that is, March -- the flower buds that form quite early are frozen. When they are pea-size they will remain that size and eventually dry up and fall off if they are caught by a temperature of, say, 26 degrees. The morning sun after a night of freezing is particularly damaging to the buds, as it is of camellia buds, so it is a good idea to plant tree peonies where the morning sun does not strike them with full force. Despite the "tree" of the name, the plant is only a shrub, usually between waist and shoulder high. Never cut the branches, which die back here and there on their own as the gardener wails. Just cut the flowers with inch-long stems and float them.

Mine are mainly against an east-facing wall of a raised pool, a site I would distrust, but that is where they need to be (according to my notion) to look best when reflected in the water. But I have seen to it they are sheltered by a high fence, some overhanging dogwood branches etc.

This year a tree peony that has been in place a couple of years produced its first and only bloom. I have not seen that color before, an intensely rich glowing coral-cherry-flame color, with the petals beautifully disposed in varying tense arcs, the petals somewhat fringed, with a boss of bright yellow stamens in the center. My other tree peonies are dark solemn purplish red, blush pink-white and mid-pink. They are gorgeous enough, but neither their colors nor their shapes rival that of the new baby. I bought her for $4.95 at a hardware store.

Whole blocks of the city are now in lavish bloom. People often come to see the cherry blossoms, and that is a pretty time as the daffodils are still in flower, but the perfect time to visit Washington is April 20-25, when the dogwoods, azaleas, wisteria and tulips are strong.

The amazing tender olive-tan leaves of the willow oaks are still delicate and small, permitting the structure of the trees to be seen, and even other trees in full leaf are at least fresh and unbattered, with a liveliness they will never show again as the months go on.

In tulips, I'd like to mention again what I consider the best tulip I have ever seen, the so-called "yellow" Hybrid Darwin variety, 'Jewel of Spring.' It opens primrose, but soon fades to an even ivory-cream. Sometimes the threadlike red edging to each petal is noticeable, sometimes not. It certainly does not affect the overall effect of a huge somewhat oval pale yellow flower.

I have grown a number of these hybrids, the result of using the wild Tulipa fosteriana as one parent, but this one is the most permanent. Given normal care (that is, keeping the bed free of the most noxious weeds, and giving a top dressing of rotted manure every three or four years), there is no telling how long the bulbs will last. I had three this year that were planted 17 years ago, and near them was a batch planted last fall. The old ones were almost as large in flower, despite almost total neglect. Another T. fosteriana descendant that lasts for years in the Washington climate is 'Purissima,' which blooms in March. It is good for about seven years, with me. I do not dig up the tulips but leave them alone once they are planted in early November.

Another tulip worth mentioning is the rose-colored 'Jo Ann.' It is not outstanding in size or habit or shape of flower. Just an ordinary tulip. But it has just that rose color, with a good bit of blue in it, that enlivens so many other colors, and which is so valuable (and so hard to locate when you pore over catalogue descriptions) in both tulips and irises.

I have a number of other tulips that need no mention, except possibly 'White Triumphator,' with pointed reflexed petals. The main thing about it is its size and height, towering over most other early April tulips (April is the month of tulips here and most are gone by May, so pay no attention to the so-called May-flowering tulips).

One of the latest tulips, which in some years lasts into the early season of the tall bearded irises, is the orange-bronze blended Breeder (an old classification) called 'Dillenburg,' and its spectacular sport, 'Orange Parrot,' which I used to grow and which had the largest flowers I ever saw in tulips. Both are intensely perfumed, a rose scent so strong I used to smell them some feet distant.

One of my treasures is a ratty young plant of a white wisteria, a variant of the lavender wild native wisteria, W. frutescens. It is or was extremely rare, but now it is sold by Woodlanders nursery at Aiken, S.C. I think mine may bloom this year, or perhaps the things I keep looking at are merely leaf buds. This plant puts out leaves the same time as, or even a bit earlier than, the usual Chinese and Japanese wisterias, but flowers several weeks later.

I first saw it in the amazing and marvelous garden of Josephine Henry at Philadelphia, where it was trained here and there over an enormous boulder. Our native wisterias are not as showy as the Asian ones, but like many wild American plants they are at least as beautiful and very much worth growing, at least by gardeners who were not sired by a neon sign.

I measured my old checkered lily (Fritillaria meleagris), which in our family we have always called the toad lily (a nonvalid name, needless to say), and the stem was 22 inches high and there were three large madder flowers on the stem. It is the lone survivor of 50 bulbs, all the others succumbing promptly either to virus or the general pouts. The usual height of this fritillary is nine inches.

Every year I get nervous in April, as in all other months, but especially when I think the wild American clematis should be showing above ground. They are always two to three weeks later than I think they ought to be, but of course they have the experience of eons on the subject of when to sprout. All three are now up and feebly reaching about for their wires. I grow them, rather artfully, I think, on some rusty old wire fence attached to steel posts, hidden behind some narrow upright box bushes about seven feet high. The idea was for the clematis to grow up the wire and then, once it gathered strength, to latch on to the box bushes and dangle its flowers, like small tops that children play with, out among the box twigs. To my surprise (as things so often do not work out) this is what the clematis has done.

For some reason, the dull blue C. crispa is two weeks later coming up than its close relatives, C. versicolor and C. viorna.

None of them makes any show at all, but all three are pretty in a modest way. As mongrel pups are charming in their way. We have a new mongrel, Maud, who I feared had Lhasa Apso blood in her (a breed I am not too fond of, having had two) but Mr. Rosenfeld at the Washington Animal Rescue League says nonsense, Maud is the pinnacle of many generations of fraternizing among every breed of terrier known to man. Her rather odd horizontal ears, he thinks, may derive from the Skye, and in toto she looks as if she might have fallen from the sky. Sweet animal and able to jump from the floor to a bed that we need a footstool to reach. And terribly clever. Already she has learned to romp through tulips.