Beginner Gardening: ? starting a peony tree, 1 by plantenthusiast

plantenthusiast wrote:
Tinya,

Depending on how big your tree peony is, it may be possible to divide it, but it would need to be a fairly large specimen. This should only be done in the fall after the plant is fully dormant. Grafting is the main means of propagating tree peony cultivars. You can learn more about grafting (although I must say that it is a fairly involved process) from the Canadian Peony Society http://www.peony.ca and the American Peony Society http://www.americanpeonysociety.org/. Also see this link for more info: http://www.peonies.org/grafting/ .

If you can get someone that has had experience grafting to help you, then that is your best bet.

You might also try sowing some of the seeds, just for fun. As noted above, they will not come true to name, unless it is a species tree peony. However, they can produce some lovely specimens, are very easy to grow, and will sometimes inherit desirable traits of the parent plants. Sow the seeds in fall about 1 cm or so deep in potting mix in a pot, say, 10 seeds to a squat gallon or so, water, set outside somewhere out of direct sun (it will dry the pots right out) or in a coldframe, keep it watered as needed (there is a root growing in there, so don't let it dry out), and in Spring, you should see nice shoots coming up! Move the pots into the sun in Spring in time for germination. It depends on the type, but they usually take about 4-5 years to flower. It's lots of fun to watch them grow!

The last thing that I can suggest is to post a photo of your tree peony (blooms, centre of flowers, foliage, entire plant) and see if we can try to identify the cultivar, in which case you could shop around for it. They can be quite reasonable when purchased bare root.

Hope that this helps,

-Plantenthusiast

Here is a photo of some of my own tree peony seedlings that have just germinated: