My Experience With Small 
Peony Divisions 
Van Wert has been growing peonies over forty 
years, but thirty-five years ago we found we had 
one real peony enthusiast in our little city. Her 
name was Clara Anderson whose beautiful home 
was located on an extra wide lot on Main Street 
adjoining the business district. Mr. L. J. Ger- 
mann, a milliner, was the first man to interest 
himself in the finer varieties. At this same time, 
1900 to about 1914 or 1915, Mrs. Sarah A. Pleas, 
a widow living in Spiceland, Indiana, had been 
growing peonies from seed. Some few of these 
new plants produced finer flowers than the old 
plants and these new plants she divided and 
planted to produce stock of them for sale. 
Her fame as a peony grower spread to Van 
Wert, and after some correspondence, Mrs. Pleas 
invited our Van Wert peony lovers to visit her 
garden in the blooming season. Mr. Germann ac- 
cepted the invitation and he was so pleased with 
the new varieties that he selected the six very 
best and ordered two roots of each of them. Miss 
Anderson had asked him to buy a root for her, 
of every variety he selected for himself. 
When these plants were two years old, Mr. 
Germann invited me to visit his garden and he 
suddenly brought me face to face with the larg- 
est, most beautiful flower I had ever seen. Its 
beauty was so great that chills seemed to be run- 
ning up and down my spine and every hair on my 
head seemed to be standing erect and tingling 
at the roots. 
I immediately offered him Ten Dollars for the 
peony but he would not consider selling it at 
any price. The plant in Mrs. Pleas’ garden had 
first bloomed on the 50th anniversary of her 
wedding day and she had given it the name 
JUBILEE. The flower was between 10 and 12 
inches in diameter with long and narrow irregu- 
lar shaped petals of cream white, with just a 
touch of light pink and yellow at the center of 
the bloom. 
