Western peony is a supremely interesting and attractive oddity of a wildflower. Consisting of slightly fleshy foliage (i.e. glaucous), big lobed leaves, large fleshy roots, giant seeds, and long pendulous pink flower stems rising then descending – bearing the singularly strange flowers. Those flowers…not numerous…but unordinary. Peculiar. Arresting. Alien. Beautiful. They consist of a half dozen large green/chocolate/purple sepals surrounding shorter maroon and gold petals, which in turn surround the reproductive organs – the packed dozens of golden filaments, ringing several large fleshy carpels. The effect is overtly sexual, a combination of colors and sensations a bit like a sliced ripe fig. It’s fantastical. A story of erotic evolution on full display from a different earth – where other climates reigned and volcanos and serpentine soils and now extinct wildlife defined the land. For all of that, this most striking plant naturally occurs inland at mid-mountain elevations, among sand and rock, within the sun-dappled understory of pine forests. It’s distributed throughout the intermountain West between the Rockies and the Pacific. From California to Idaho. In mesic soils (neither high desert dry, nor wetland) where other wildflowers tend to be numerous and abundant, and the winters are cold but not deeply blanketed in snow. While we know these basics, the deeper lifeways of this plant are enigmatic. The flowers smell funky, likely to attract flies as pollinators (although other creatures also visit them, including small sweat bees and wasps). Deer tend to ignore the plant. Its actual annual growing season is short, compressed into the spring, then going dormant in the summer. The whole affair never gets much more than a about a foot in height, making it seem short if you’re familiar with other (non-native) peony species. And the massive-sized seeds likely benefit from a mysterious set of cold stratification and other dormancy-breaking mechanisms to prompt germination. A true specimen plant for the native garden. 5 large seeds (3.5 grams).
