BRYAN & MAUREEN GOMM

SOUTH EAST LONDON  (They're my cousins)

Bryan and Maureen sent me some smashing photographs of plants they grow in their garden, they're called tree peonies, I don't know where they originate from, perhaps some well informed reader can enlighten us. I suspect they're from the East, probably China.

	A beautiful Tree Peony.		Compared to a man's hand.
	The centre enlarged.		This looks more like a species type in comparison.

What impressed me was , the size of the stigma, as you can see in the blown up version, there is just one, unlike the hundreds in a composite type flower like the dahlia. It would be interesting to cross the dark pink variety with the soft salmon, and see what developed. So easy to cut all the anthers off of the seed variety (Soft salmon) and use the pollen from the other variety to perhaps make a whole new family of varieties. I suspect these tree peonies only flower once every year, unlike our dahlias, but what a flower. A project for next year I think Bryan and Maureen. Incidentally the plants growing in my cousins garden are well over six feet tall.

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