Should you remove your peony seed pods?

DEADHEADING PEONIES IS GENERALLY A GOOD IDEA

After your peonies are done blooming there are a few reasons to cut those old flower heads off. But there’s also one big reason you might want to leave them on!

First, trimming off the spent flower heads can give your plant a tidier look in the garden. Cutting the stem off just above a leaf node is a great way to conceal the cut to give the remaining peony foliage a natural look that doesn’t appear sheared.

Not all peony varieties produce seed heads, but many do! Now is the time to decide whether or not you want to let those seeds develop.

Removing the developing seed pods after your flower petals fall allow the plant to put it’s energy into healthy foliage and a more robust root system. With the seed pods left on, the peony will devote a large amount of energy to making seeds.

If you are not looking to grow more peonies from seed, your plant will benefit from removing those seed pods by putting that energy into growing more roots instead. We recommend removing them for this reason.

However, if you are looking to grow those seeds into new peonies you can leave them on and allow the seeds to develop! Your peony seeds will not grow the same type of peony they came from, but rather a new version with varying attributes of its parent plants.

One of my favorite example of this is Moon of Nippon, a White Japanese form with a bright yellow center, that was grown from seed off a Marie Lemoine peony. Marie Lemoine is a beautiful and very large double white with traces of crimson on the petal edges. Isani Gidui is the other parent peony that very much resembles the Moon of Nippon, but again, the seeds were harvested from Marie Lemoine. Compare them in the photo below!

Stay tuned for next week’s email for the how to on growing peonies from seed!