428 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



year which amply repays all the trouble of the cultivation, and 

 each clump in succeeding years will enlarge and become a 

 greater source of pleasure and enjoyment in the garden. It is 

 when four or five years old that Paeonies give the noble, long- 

 stemmed flowers which in May and early June one sees filling vases 

 in almost every window in the French cities, and which make a 

 garden with only a few large clumps of Paeonies so beautiful and 

 so attractive. 



A NEW CLASSIFICATION OF THE GENUS P^ONIA. 

 By Mr. K. Irwin Lynch, F.R.H.S. ; A.L.S. 

 [Read June 10, 1890.] 



I beg leave to lay before the Society a new classification of 

 the genus Pceonia, in which I have grouped and arranged the 

 species according to my estimation of their true relationship. 

 No natural arrangement exists that can be used for plants of the 

 present day, and I believe that such an arrangement is always 

 the most useful and convenient. There are, for instance, 

 several plants in gardens that are incorrectly called Russi, and 

 by the following arrangement it may readily be observed that 

 they do not resemble any plant of the group in which Russi is 

 placed, and consequently it may be seen, without reading a 

 description, that the names are wrong. 



This genus is found to be difficult ; and though it would 

 scarcely be possible to remove all the difficulty, I hope by means 

 of this arrangement to make it more easily understood. It is 

 difficult for various reasons, but more especially in gardens, 

 because some of the types are connected by intermediate grada- 

 tions, both of hybrid and probably wild origin, the history and 

 knowledge of which have been lost. We have various forms that 

 have not been described or figured, while the figures and 

 descriptions that we have are often insufficient for the certain 

 identification of the plants they represent. It is difficult as a 

 critical genus on account of rich variation within the limits of 

 those subordinate groups we call species, and because some 



