THE WILD PLANT 
Curiously however, the wild form of this plant has only 
been discovered within recent years. Among the first to see 
it was) Reginalds Parrer, autwor Cle. Onethes aves Olstie 
World” who writes of finding it near the border of Tibet: 
“So I sat at last and rested, gazing down the steep loess 
tracks to the little village so pleasant-looking in its grove of 
poplars, till my eye was caught by certain white objects 
farther along the hillside, that were clearly too big by far 
to be flowers .... Through the foaming shallows of the copse 
I plunged, and soon was holding my breath with growing 
excitement as I neared my goal, and it became more and more 
certain that I was setting eyes on Paeonia moutan as a wild 
plant. The event itself justified enthusiasm but all consid- 
erations of botanical geography vanished from my mind in 
the first contemplation of that amazing flower, the most over- 
poweringly superb of hardy shrubs. Here in the brushwood 
it grew up tall and slender and straight, in two or three un- 
branching shoots, each one of which carried at the top, ele- 
gantly balancing, that single enormous blossom, waved and 
crimped into the boldest grace of line, of absolute pure white, 
with featherings of deepest maroon radiating at the base of 
the petals from the boss of golden fluff at the flower’s heart. 
Above the sere and thorny scrub the snowy beauties poised 
and hovered, and the breath of them went out on the twi- 
light as sweet as any rose. For a long time I remained in 
worship and returned downward at last in high contentment.” 
THE CULTIVATED FLOWER 
Plants grown today from seeds are often single whites 
closely resembling this description of the wild plant. But 
beautiful though they are, they can not compete in the same 
Clascawithts -bavilionw.ol swadiance... Vlounteineo meoiinel i 
Snow, «(Sees cut)ys Chery Ossoniot theshocusamaVihine 
Coiling Dragon’, and the long list of other named varieties 
which are the result of a thousand years of patient selection 
and improvement. It is difficult to believe that a flower with 
such qualities has remained one of the rarest of all flowers to 
American gardeners. 
