It has been a long time with colder-than-average temperatures. Night times usually freezing, day times between 5-10°C. This results in plants not actively growing. Our peony broker sent out a newsletter today and in this mentions a lot of problems due to this. The main issue being young stems that fall over due to botrytis at ground level. That is also the case in our fields. There are large differences between cultivars and also the growing stage they happen to be in. New plantings are also usually unaffected. Within the same cultivars some plants show no damage whilst others are nearly completely lost. An interesting breeding goal would probably be more botrytis resistant varieties, but it’s only clearly visible what cultivars are susceptible when you grow larger numbers of them it seems, so that would obviously be too late for selection of good ones. It is however possible to select for quite resistant parent plants… Here are some of the most affected ones. Cytherea, Coral Charm, Amalia Olson, Command Performance, Many Happy Returns are some of the worst. Otherwise The Fawn and Old Faithful show not a single infected stem despite being at the same growing stage and having large numbers of them. Some of the worst plants are shown (these are the exceptions fortunately 😉 )