Paeonia mascula (peony)

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Paeonia mascula, photographed by Ruben Ciantia — fig. a Ruben Ciantia, CC BY 4.0 / 2017-06-02 / obs. 68490056

Paeonia mascula, photographed by elias ziade — fig. b elias ziade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 456147

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 14 botanical countries

Native distribution of Paeonia mascula, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cyprus	CYP	ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is.	EAI
Iran	IRN
Iraq	IRQ
Lebanon-Syria	LBS
Palestine	PAL
Türkiye	TUR
Albania	ALB	EUROPE
Bulgaria	BUL
France	FRA
Greece	GRC
Italy	ITA
Sicilia	SIC
Spain	SPA

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 108 in flower of 165 examined

67%

80%

70%

46%

20%

Proportion of examined Paeonia mascula in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	6	9	67%	35% to 88%
Apr	63	79	80%	70% to 87%
May	32	46	70%	55% to 81%
Jun	6	13	46%	23% to 71%
Jul	1	5	20%	4% to 62%
Aug	0	2	too few examined
Sep	0	4	too few examined
Oct	0	3	too few examined
Nov	0	4	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Paeonia mascula 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. 108 of 165 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 26 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 arietina var. orientalis (J.Thiébaut) Stern
Paeonia corallina Retz.
Paeonia corallina prol. ovatifolia Rouy & Foucaud
Paeonia corallina prol. russoi (Biv.) Rouy & Foucaud
Paeonia corallina prol. triternata Rouy & Foucaud
Paeonia corallina subsp. russoi (Biv.) Nyman
Paeonia corallina var. flavescens (C.Presl) Guss.
Paeonia corallina var. orientalis J.Thiébaut
Paeonia corallina var. russoi (Biv.) P.Fourn.
Paeonia corallina var. russoi (Biv.) Coss.
Paeonia flavescens C.Presl
Paeonia integra Murray
Paeonia kavachensis Azn.
Paeonia kurdistanica Zohary
Paeonia mas Garsault
Paeonia mascula subsp. icarica Tzanoud.
Paeonia mascula subsp. orientalis (J.Thiébaut) D.Y.Hong
Paeonia mascula var. flavescens (C.Presl) Gürke
Paeonia mascula var. hellenica Stearn & P.H.Davis
Paeonia mascula var. icarica Stearn & P.H.Davis
Paeonia mascula var. russoi (Biv.) N.G.Passal. & Bernardo
Paeonia mascula var. russoi (Biv.) Gürke
Paeonia officinalis subsp. corallina (Retz.) Fiori
Paeonia officinalis var. mascula L.

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol PACO55. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.