The Story of the One Eye 
Peony Division 
By LEE R. BONNEWITZ 
Very soon after I was married, nearly forty years 
ago, Mrs. Bonnewitz told me that we ought to have some 
peonies planted in our garden. She had visited our local 
florist and he had promised her that if I would dig the 
flower beds that he would furnish forty 3 to 5 eye peony 
divisions in pink, white and red varieties at twenty-five 
cents each and that he would without any extra expense 
plant them for us. 
Within two years when our forty peonies were suc¬ 
cessfully blooming we glanced over our neighbor’s fence 
and found that she had five peonies blooming and that 
one of them was more beautiful than any one of our 
forty. We asked where she obtained that beautiful peony 
and we found she had procured it from an agent and that 
she had paid fifty cents for her 3 to 5 eye division of it. 
We asked her to have the agent call on us and we im¬ 
mediately bought some of his 3 to 5 eye divisions and 
gladly paid him fifty cents for each of them. 
• • • 
Th E next year we heard of a flower lover in a dis¬ 
tant part of the town who had a peony planting as large 
as our own and on Peony Sunday we made a visit to it. 
We were greatly surprised when our host pointed out a 
large pink variety and spoke of it as ALEXANDER 
DUMAS, a very beautiful large white one and spoke of it 
as FESTIVA MAXIMA, and a very, very beautiful red 
one and called it FELIX CROUSSE. We expressed our 
surprise that his peonies had names and we asked where 
he had procured them. He told us that he purchased 
them through an advertisement he saw in a catalogue. 
He said it was a fruit tree catalogue and gave us the 
name of the grower and told us that three to five eye 
divisions with names were priced at one dollar each. We 
immediately wrote for the catalogue and selected those 
with the most aristocratic names like EMPEROR OF 
RUSSIA, DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE, DUCHESSE DE 
NEMOURS and willingly sent our one dollar each for 
three of the 3 to 5 eye divisions. 
The next year our neighbor, L. J. Germann, a flower 
