Peony

The peony, Paeonia, is a long-lived perennial or shrub of Eurasia bearing large, full, many-petalled flowers. Its name comes from Paeon, the physician of the Greek gods, and a myth explains it: Paeon used the plant to heal a wound, and when his teacher Asclepius grew jealous, the gods saved Paeon from death by turning him into the flower that bears his name. The plant thus carried from the first a reputation as a herb of healing and protection, and its seeds and roots were worn as amulets against harm, folklore recorded here as history.

A specific legend explains why Luoyang, rather than the imperial capital, became China's peony city: the story holds that the empress Wu Zetian, ruling in the seventh century, ordered all the flowers in her garden to bloom in the depth of winter, and when the peonies alone refused, she had them banished in punishment to Luoyang, where they flourished so magnificently that the city's association with the flower has outlasted the empress by well over a thousand years, a tale illustrating the flower's long-standing reputation for a certain proud independence. The peony most bound up with Chinese luxury, the tree peony, Paeonia suffruticosa, is a woody shrub, botanically and horticulturally distinct from the herbaceous peony, Paeonia lactiflora, the softer-stemmed perennial more familiar in Western gardens, though both share the name and much of the symbolism recorded here.

In China the tree peony is the king of flowers, the supreme emblem of wealth, honour and high rank, its lush blossom a sign of prosperity and of feminine beauty; the city of Luoyang has been famed for its peonies for a thousand years, and the flower is a favourite of imperial and decorative art. In European folk belief the peony retained its ancient protective role, planted by the house and its seeds strung on children to guard against fits, storms and evil spirits, with a legend that it shone at night and must be gathered with care. Healing, protection, wealth and honour all gather to the great full flower, from the physician of the Greek gods to the imperial gardens of China.

The peony carries modern civic status on both sides of the Pacific: it is the official state flower of Indiana in the United States, and in China, though the country has no single legally designated national flower, the peony has repeatedly topped public polls and been informally proposed for that role, continuing, in a modern civic register, the same association with rank and prestige the flower has carried since the Tang dynasty. Japanese art pairs the peony, botan, with the lion, karajishi, a stylised pairing meant to show beauty and bravery joined, since the lion was said to fear only the peony's thorn, a specifically Japanese motif distinct from the imperial associations the flower carries in China.