Some recent developments with Gansu Mudan…

Gansu Mudan are tree Peonies with distinctive flares on the lower parts of the petals. Sometimes these are red, sometimes very dark, almost black, and at other times, not so obvious. These flares are known by the Chinese as ‘purple spots’.

The plants are generally tall and vigorous, floriferous and robust. They are also cold tolerant, drought tolerant and heat tolerant. Mostly they are fragrant with very large blooms. And the plants famous for being extremely long lived.

In the last 100 years a tremendous amount of hybridising has been done with these in the West, and in China during the last 50 years. It seems that most of the Western cultivars and hybrids with some Gansu lineage, have been bred from the original 3 packets of Garden Peony seeds that were sent from Gansu by Joseph Rock, an Austrian plant hunter in the pay of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. These were not Paeonia rockii, and in fact, were not wild pure species, but were hybridised varieties – China has been breeding Peonies for millenia. So those 3 sent packets were a very small gene pool. There are many more amazing Gansu Mudan varieties.

More recently, Gansu Peonies have been made available by the by some growers in South Gansu. The most famous breeder during these years was Chen De Zhong. His brother-in-law, Yang Chen Wei, has also been breeding all this time. And many of his new cultivars are available from the main Gansu nurseries.

However, there is one enormous challenge, and that is that the Chinese names usually triple word names for each cultivar don’t mean much to Western buyers nor are they memorable for Westerners, because they don’t know the meaning of those Romanised Chinese words.

The Yang family have recently given Westernised, mostly descriptive names to many of their peonies. And this should assist with buyers remembering the names of their purchased Peonies. This should also make them more attractive to own.