44 MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



REMARKS. 



Remakes on the Tree P.^eony, by Ci.ericls — Recently noticing in the 

 Cabinet that a correspondent requests information on the Tree Paeony, I for- 

 ward the following for insertion in the next number : — 



For beauty and size of the flower the Paony has not many rivals, especially 

 in the P. Moutau and its varieties. Several of them were long known from 

 works on the plants of China and Japan, as well as from their representations 

 on Chinese porcelain and paper hangings, before any plants of them were brought 

 to Europe. The first that was introduced into England was imported in 1789 ; 

 and though attempts to bring home living plants of the species have subsequently 

 been made in almost all the succeeding years, especially during the last twenty, 

 yet the number of varieties in our gardens were, until lately, but few. That 

 several more exist in China is well known, not onlv from descriptions, but from 

 authenticated representations which have been transmitted from that country. 



The introduction from China of Moutans of any description is attended with 

 difficulty, for of the plants which are put on shipboard in China to be brought to 

 England very few live to reach their destination. With the exception of the 

 Azaleas, they seem to bear a long voyage worse than any other of the productions 

 of the Chinese gardens which we have hitherto obtained. 



Large quantities of flowering plants, closely laid together in open packages, 

 without mould to their roots, are annually brought in the course of the winter 

 from distant parts of the Chinese empire to Canton. These, notwithstanding 

 this exposure, blossom in the ensuing spring ; but either from the climate not 

 agreeing with them, or the treatment they receive being unsuitable, the state of 

 those which survive to the autumn is such that they are not tit for removal with 

 any chance of success. After their first blossoming at Canton these plants never 

 flower again, but dwindle and decay ; and from this cause the captains of the 

 British Indiamen, which leave Canton in the winter season, are unable to obtain 

 any which have been proved to be of the more desirable kinds. Their purchases 

 are necessarily made from the stock brought into the market in the manner 

 above mentioned, in which the varieties most wanted are either very rare, or only 

 sold to the Chinese, and are, besides, not very easily distinguishable whilst 

 divested of their foliage ; so that the living plants which do arrive in England 

 usually turn out to be the sort which we have had here longest as well as in 

 most abundance, and which it may be presumed is the most common in China, 

 or at least at Canton. 



Paeonia Moutan is readily distinguished from all the other species of the 

 genus by its suffrutescent stem. The majority of the plants at present in our 

 gardens are small bushes, not exceeding four to six feet in diameter; some few 

 old ones are larger, and they will grew to be eight or ten feet high, and will 

 extend equally in breadth. The branches, if sufficiently vigorous, produce each 

 a single flower at their extremities. The leaves are very distinctly biternate ; 

 they are shining green, more or less dark above, glaucous underneath, and may 

 be described as smooth, ihough a very few hairs occasionally exist on their 

 petioles and the under parts of the folioles. Differences in the leaves of the 

 varieties are observable ; the flowers, however, afford the chief distinctions in 

 the number, colours, and markings of the petals. The flower-buds differ from 

 those of other species of the genus, in having almost uniformly five spatulate 

 hractes arranged circularly close below the calyx. The calyx leaves are five in 

 number, of different sizes, as in the species of Herbaceous Paeonies. The flowers 

 in a conservatory first appear in April, and are produced and remain in beauty 

 till the middle of May. In the open border they open in April, and continue to 

 expand until the end of June. 



Pceoma Moutan Papaveracen. — The plant which has been adopted as the type 

 of ihe species, in consequence of its having single, or rather nearly single flowers, 

 has been always called Papaveracea, not because its petals are like those of the 

 Poppy, but because its germens, when enveloped by their membranous covering, 

 resemble a capsule of the large Papaver Somnifeium. The P. Moutan Papave- 

 racea was imported by Captain James Pendergras, in the Hope East Indiaman, 

 for Sir Abraham Hume, in 1802, and the plant first blossomed in 1806. I do 

 not believe that any other plant of the variety has been brought from China; 



