£yman ©. 9JUxMxMck 
and HU 
Tie&niei. 
About sixty or seventy years ago when I was a small 
boy, the only peony in our garden was a dark red 
double one which grew splendidly every year and pro¬ 
duced blooms' in abundance. Its blooming period was 
usually about May 25th to June 10th and its flowers 
were cut for Decoration Day, which we now usually 
speak of as Memorial Day. There is a white one and 
a pink one of the same species, but neither of them 
grow so vigorously as the red one. The botanical name 
of these early blooming varieties is Officinalis and as 
all Officinalis peonies originated in Europe, I will call 
them European varieties. 
There ^re thousands of varieties of later blooming 
peonies which in this latitude sometimes produce blooms 
for Memorial Day but whose early blooming date can¬ 
not be absolutely relied upon. These thousands of later 
blooming varieties are called Chinensis peonies which 
means that they originated in China and in this cata¬ 
logue I speak of them as Chinese varieties. 
About twenty years ago or possibly a little less, 
Lyman D. Glasscock, whose address is R.F.D. No. 2, El- 
wood, Illinois, began to try to cross the European 
and Chinese species of peonies for the express purpose 
of procuring new varieties of peonies which would 
produce blooms on or before May 30th for use on 
Memorial Day. 
Every member of the Peony Society who attends 
the National Peony Shows has been interested in seeing 
the results of Mr. Glasscock’s efforts in hybridizing 
or crossing these two species. All the new varieties 
which appear in his garden as a result of these cross¬ 
ings are called hybrid peonies. 
At our 1940 National Peony Show he exhibited over 
two hundred and possibly even over three hundred 
individual hybrid seedling blooms whose parentage was 
a combination of both the European and Chinese species. 
His display of single type, Japanese type and double 
type hybrid peonies excited an interest as great as that 
manifested in the Court of Honor. During the last five 
years particularly, Mr. Glasscock has produced hybrid 
varieties of which he and every member of the Peony 
Society can be very proud. 
I asked him last year to select for me six or eight 
of the very best hybrid varieties in his garden and I 
gladly sent him a check for them. Every one of them 
bloomed for me this year and all peony enthusiasts 
who saw them were as enthusiastic as I over Mr. Glass¬ 
cock’s success. 
THE BONNEWITZ PEONY GARDENS 
Lee R. Bonnewitz 
VAN WERT, OHIO 
