Paeonia lactifloraPall.

Chinese peony

WFO wfo-0000480479 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Paeonia lactiflora, photographed by Елена Кизилова
fig. a Елена Кизилова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 205369395

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 10 botanical countries

Regions where Paeonia lactiflora is native: Amur, China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Khabarovsk, Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye AmurChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastChitaInner MongoliaKhabarovskManchuriaMongoliaPrimorye
Native distribution of Paeonia lactiflora, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Amur AMU ASIA-TEMPERATE
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Khabarovsk KHA
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 31 in flower of 77 examined

Proportion of examined Paeonia lactiflora in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 1 too few examined
Apr 2 6 33% 10% to 70%
May 6 11 55% 28% to 79%
Jun 11 14 79% 52% to 92%
Jul 12 40 30% 18% to 45%
Aug 0 3 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 0 2 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Paeonia lactiflora observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 31 of 77 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 34 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Paeonia albiflora Pall.
  • Paeonia albiflora f. hirta Regel
  • Paeonia albiflora f. nuda Nakai
  • Paeonia albiflora f. pilifera Schipcz.
  • Paeonia albiflora f. pilosella Nakai
  • Paeonia albiflora var. edulis (Salisb.) Pursh
  • Paeonia albiflora var. fragrans Sabine
  • Paeonia albiflora var. humei Sabine
  • Paeonia albiflora var. pottsii D.Don
  • Paeonia albiflora var. pubescens Nakai
  • Paeonia albiflora var. purpurea Korsh.
  • Paeonia albiflora var. spontanea Makino
  • Paeonia albiflora var. trichocarpa Bunge
  • Paeonia albiflora var. whitleyi Sabine
  • Paeonia edulis Salisb.
  • Paeonia edulis var. reevesiana Paxton
  • Paeonia edulis var. sinensis Sims
  • Paeonia fragrans (Sabine) Redouté
  • Paeonia fragrans E.Vilm.
  • Paeonia humei (Sabine) E.Vilm.
  • Paeonia lactea Pall.
  • Paeonia lactiflora f. nuda (Nakai) Kitag.
  • Paeonia lactiflora f. pilosella (Nakai) Kitag.
  • Paeonia lactiflora var. hirta (Regel) Y.C.Chu

and 10 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.