Description
Paeonia sandrae is an endemic of the island of Sardinia, which has been recognised recently by Ignazio Camarda (Fl. Medit. 25: 127-136 2015) it is considered distinct from the other Paeonia found on Sardinia.
P. sandrae (named for the author’s daughter, Sandra) is a tetraploid species which has leaves that are not leathery (coriaceous) and which are glabrous below. It usually has 3-7 carpels and these are strongly curved downwards at maturity. The seeds are larger and rounder than P. mascula. (It differs from both P. corsica (tetraploid)and P. morisii (diploid) which both have coriaceous leaves, which are also hairy beneath).
Here it is one of our earlier species, rivalling both P. morisii and P. turcica to be the one opening the first flowers of the season; usually in the first two weeks of April. It grows readily outside with us and despite several moves when it was in growth, it has survived to enable us to identify it at last.
It came to us originally in the late 1990s from one of our European customers, as a single-nosed division of his plant, collected many years before that. This was all before the plant was even recognised as different and given a name. It was found originally on Sardinia in the general area of the Foresta do Burgos. Despite the parent plants (for now we too have divisions) being clonal, this sets excellent, fertile seed, from careful hand pollination.
New to our lists July 2019
