Variants, and something cute

Paeonia peregrina, usually deep red but varying towards salmon/coral in some populations in the wild. This is the first non-red flower that has shown itself here. Quite a standout.

This cute little thing is Arisarum proboscoides, called the Mouse Tail Plant. Its foliage is the arrowhead shaped stuff in the next photo down. The genus name celebrates the similarities of the flower with the Arisaemae (jack-in-the-pulpits and cobra lilies) and of the growth habit with the Asarums (hardy gingers); one really has to dig through the foliage to find the flowers.

I would have taken the piece of plastic out of there before taking the picture, but honestly didn't see it!!

Okay, back to peonies. The following 3 photos show variation of flower colour between plants from a single open-pollinated seedlot (collected here) of Paeonia veitchii (Veitch's Peony)
The darkest is really somewhat redder than the photo shows, but there is something about the way the camera catches the light which overemphasizes the blue tint. (and it has nothing to do with blue sky, because there was none that day or most other days since the start of May!!)
The mid-pink is most common, here.

More of White Anomala

As hoped, a better photo of the flower.

And a close-up of the reproductive parts. The stigmas seem very small.

My report of the possibility of a few more coming into bloom shortly was premature. Along the lines of "don't count your peonies until they flower"; all the others were the normal pink/rose. The relative paleness of the early foliage either a figment of my imagination or unrelated to the eventual flower colour. Well, now we know.

My two plants are co-located, but bloomed sequentially this year so no cross-pollination. For that matter no by-hand selfing either, since I never managedto get any pollen onto a brush for transfer. I hope the insects have done a good job for me. If there is a seed set, it will be about 2015 or 16 before I know if I have true seedlings, so don't start writing cheques yet.

An Anomaly of the Anomaous Peony

After years of waiting, and from the wrong seed batch!, blooms of a Paeonia anomala forma alba: the white-flowered form of Paeonia anomala. One bloomed after a fashion last year, but the flower was stunted and damaged by weather and insects, so this year's is really my first. There is again some insect damage to the outer petals, which I don't ever see on normal pink anomala or any other peony for that matter! This is the first day, and the flower I think is not completely open; should get a fully-open photo added soon.

The foliage is lighter green than the species normally has (especially when first emerging), and without the reddish stem that marks most of my other anomala's, but is otherwise within the normal range for size, shape and narrowness of segmentation.

Two known plants (the bud of the second has coloured up but not yet opened) and a couple of others that I think will be white but the buds are still green. Which means that with a bit of skillful paintbrush hand-pollinating a decent seed set should result (if not this year then soon? I have noticed that some peonies do not set seed in their first year of flowering; and there is always the weather issue!)

A Sudden Outburst of Sun-- and Peonies

The cold and grey of most of May was good for one thing: watching the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) bike race on tv. The Spaniard Contador, after whose exploits I've named a peony, was in a fine fettle, lit up the race a few times, and won the thing. Great style to watch on the bike, and explosive uphill. Motivating.

Finally things warmed up here, outside, although remaining cloudy. Then 2 days of sun and it was suddenly almost hard to hear anything except peonies popping.

I had decided to try my darndest to prevent the bees from cross-pollinating the darker-flowered species into the lighter ones. This has meant clipping the buds of many plants while they are well-coloured but not quite open. But what to do with them all? Well, a couple of floating cut-flower projects have evolved. 6 buds of P mascula filled a large glass mixing bowl once all opened, but I'd have needed over a dozen of them. So some clean plastic planting trays sufficed, or will eventually, for the rest, holding about 40 buds each (now working on the third). In addition to mascula, there are a lot of P caucasica and P kesrouanensis, some P ruprechtiana (all 3 of those of the mascula clan and very similar), and a few early P veitchii and P officinalis.













So now the yellows and whites are free to be bee'd without muddying their colours, if not exactly keeping their gene pools clean (I'll do some hand-pollinating with a paintbrush to help that aspect). But wait, I also really need seed of P triternata, so there is the slight chance of some pink after all. Oh well. And then there's the bright red P tenuifolia in bloom in one location: that colour is welcome to mix with the yellows if it wants!

Blogger refuses to insert photos in the order I send them, and moving them around has crashed the blog more than once, so the following are not in my preferred order; but what the heck.

White form of P steveniana, flower and plant. That's about as open as the flowers of this species get.











A very pale form of P mlokosewitschii, which started to open yesterday. There is a subtle blush of pink at the base of the petals. I call this the "Moonlight form". This plant is one year out of the pot, where it had 2 stems last year.

P mlokosewitschii proper, the Golden Peony.

P steveniana proper, a bit paler than mlokosewitschii and a bit darker than P tomentosa (which is done now). And a grouping of 3 plants.

And just to prove that I'm not totally against the "pinks" this year, a nice dark-flowered form of P caucasica.

The 2011 Peony Season Commmences

Shockingly, an update to this blog. Spring has been wet, and cold until just recently, but plants are either ahead of normal or somewhat behind: no consistent trend that I can figure out.

Last year I finally planted a Paeonia mairei in a bed, so I now know that it blooms about at the same time as what I had normally considered the first of the peonies. It looks like it suffered a wee whirlwind in its vicinity recently, and one of the flowering stems folded and failed before the bud could open. I didn't take a photo of the one open flower because it is somewhat windblown and ratty, or more precisely I should say shredded by raindrops and well-munched by slugs. A tidy, compact plant. For a good photo of the flower, see entries from previous years.


The normal "first", Paeonia tomentosa or the Woolly Peony. Usually the plants down in the shade beds open a week later than the ones near the house, but this year they are opening simultaneously. No real surprise, it truly has been no brighter in the open than in the woods this year!!!! and this plant species proves it.

Pale yellow with a touch of green.

Things peony-wise will look a bit imbalanced here this year: in order to get decently true seed without off-colour pollution, I will be removing the buds of the red/ magenta/ pink species plants where they overlap with the yellow species. I tried to interest a florist in them, but couldn't; so I will probably end up with floating dozens of them in trays of water in the house (and hopefully not stepping in one during a middle-watch visit to the wc)

Not about Plants this time-- Jan Lisiecki Recital

This is worth writing about (and it fits into here better than any of the other blogs I do.)

Last Friday night after a recital (good but not outstanding) in Wolfville by soprano Wendy Nielson I found out by accident that the young (15 now) Calgary pianist Jan Lisiecki was performing there the next night. I'd heard some of his playing and an interview with him on CBC radio last spring and perhaps even earlier and had been impressed by what I heard musically and also the personality aspect. So out on the bike on Saturday I thought about making another quick raid on Wolfville by car(!!) and although I had used the car every day that week (outrageous, I know it) I decided that it was unlikely he would play the Maritimes again in my lifetime since he was certain to be in worldwide demand very soon if he isn't already, so this was really a chance that I couldn't pass up. So I went. And am ever so glad that I did.

At the beginning of each half of the program and at a few points during it, he spoke to the audience about the music and to pass on his gratitude to the organizers. He was well-spoken, had a confident manner, connected well with the audience, and spoke without notes. All to the good.

His program started with a couple of works by Bach, then a piece by the Canadian composer Mozetich, and then a set of Chopin Etudes before the intermission and 6 other Chopin works after it. Bach was spoiled for me in my childhood by being forced to play too much of it for competitions. But I enjoyed it as a program opener. Mozetich: well, maybe I had heard the name on the radio but that was about it. But the piece Jan played was very good and I'm grateful to him for introducing me to this composer, and I think he did the composer justice in his treatment of the piece.

But the Chopin: my God! I can't speak to the technical aspect of his playing; I'm sure there is room for improvement, but there was nothing jarring to this set of ears. Let's just say his fingers were nimble and danced over the keyboard with speed and grace, but also with strength. I very much enjoyed his phrasing of the music with various tempo changes and the full range of volume dynamics from an exquisite featherweight touch to the full force of his body. And he played from his heart, baring his soul and that of the music to the audience. It was fantastic!!

Of the pieces that I knew from recordings, his performance suffered by comparison with none of the artists I've heard. Of the ones that were new to me, it was just magic.

I knew that piano music could make me weep, but when he played the Chopin Nocturne No. 20 in C-sharp minor I discovered to my surprise that in the right hands a piano could weep. Cellos, vioins, even horns-- yes, I had heard them weep. But a piano-- I wouldn't have credited it. Now I know better.

Following the oh so moving Nocturne, Jan concluded with a tour de force in the Andante spianato et grand polonaise brillante, E-flat Major, Op. 22 with a verve and intensity and brilliance suitable for the evening's finale. Breathtaking, and I was jumping out of my skin.

For readers of this blog, if you get a chance to go to one of his performances, don't hesitate-- just GO! I don't think you'll regret it unless you truly dislike classical piano as a genre.

There was an amusing incident at the end of the intermission when Jan, acting as his own timekeeper, stepped out onto the stage ready to commence-- but the lighting/electrical tech wasn't as punctual so Jan caught everyone by surprise, speaking into a dead microphone with the houselights still up and the stage spots off. Good for him! I liked that when he was ready he went for it. May he continue to keep stage managers on their toes!

The only disappointment of the evening was in no way the young pianist's fault. It would have been nice if the organizers had put a closed-circuit tv camera on the keyboard for display to the audience on an overhead screen; the piano seems to me to be the only instrument which blocks the view of the performer's hands from about half of the audience, and it would have been nice to see the hands in action as well as hearing the music.

Appropriate Colours

In the prime of bloom just in time for World Cup Sunday, the very late-blooming Azalea "July Jester" vibrant in Oranje. A good choice.

Somewhere around abouts are flowers of yellow and flowers of red but they're not co-located so the "other side" is unrepresented here.

Although really, I'm not particular about who wins the thing just so long as it is a good and interesting game with lots of skills on display, a good pace, and a referee disinterested in blowing his whistle.