A rare gem for most peony hybridizers: B-3, an as yet unnamed and unregistered seedling from Bartzella x Lemon Chiffon, thus an intersectional backcross, of which there aren’t many. It’s a sister seedling to Moonwalk (formerly B-4) and Golden Monika (B-1). All of them hybridized by Hans Maschke from Germany. He has no nursery, and doesn’t sell, no point asking him, but his plants are at the beginning of the propagation cycle in some other nurseries and will eventually become available.

It’s a beautiful plant in it’s own right, but these are obviously most interesting plants to use in hybridizing. The intersectional hybrids are less susceptible to diseases compared to the usual herbaceous cultivars. The foliage on this plant is less like the tree peonies and there’s hardly any scent, so it shows more herbaceous characteristics compared to the intersectionals, except for the flower of course. The stems are still somewhat stocky, the leaflets go down to the ground, the plant is somewhat short, the flowers are pale yellow and semi-double.

Fertility of this plant is at least as good as Moonwalk, but the latter grew faster and was thus first to be registered. It’s pollen is fertile as I’ve gotten some seeds from it on Pink Vanguard, those even germinated but sadly died afterwards. Some other hybridizers also report good results with pollen from these intersectional backcrosses. I’ve not yet heard of them setting seed, but there aren’t too many plants as yet and they are mostly immature, so that remains to be seen.

Images are in reverse chronological order, showing the changing of the leaflet colours well.

(posted previously on the facebook and instagram pages of peonysociety.eu as well)