Paeonia tenuifolia

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Paeonia tenuifolia, photographed by Елена Патерикина — fig. c Елена Патерикина, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 73967500

Paeonia tenuifolia, photographed by Aleksei Baushev — fig. d Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 84756222

Paeonia tenuifolia, photographed by Фая Баландина — fig. g Фая Баландина, CC0 1.0 / obs. 76328864

Paeonia tenuifolia, photographed by Yehor Yatsiuk — fig. h Yehor Yatsiuk, CC0 1.0 / obs. 76880203

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 9 botanical countries

Native distribution of Paeonia tenuifolia, 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
Bulgaria	BUL	EUROPE
East European Russia	RUE
Krym	KRY
NW. Balkan Pen.	YUG
Romania	ROM
South European Russia	RUS
Altay	ALT	ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus	NCS
Transcaucasus	TCS

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 808 in flower of 1,723 examined

14%

55%

74%

17%

Proportion of examined Paeonia tenuifolia in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	16	0%	0% to 19%
Feb	0	21	0%	0% to 15%
Mar	18	131	14%	9% to 21%
Apr	310	564	55%	51% to 59%
May	472	642	74%	70% to 77%
Jun	3	121	2%	1% to 7%
Jul	0	80	0%	0% to 5%
Aug	0	45	0%	0% to 8%
Sep	2	29	7%	2% to 22%
Oct	0	56	0%	0% to 6%
Nov	3	18	17%	6% to 39%
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Paeonia tenuifolia 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. 808 of 1,723 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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 20 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 biebersteiniana Rupr.
Paeonia carthalinica Ketsk.
Paeonia hybrida Pall.
Paeonia laciniata Pall.
Paeonia lithophila Kotov
Paeonia multifida Gueldenst.
Paeonia tenuifolia f. brevifolia (Prodan & Borza) Borza
Paeonia tenuifolia f. latifolia (Prodan & Borza) Borza
Paeonia tenuifolia f. latisecta (Neilr.) Borza
Paeonia tenuifolia f. parviflora (Huth) Borza
Paeonia tenuifolia subsp. biebersteiniana (Rupr.) Takht.
Paeonia tenuifolia subsp. biebersteiniana (Rupr.) Halda
Paeonia tenuifolia var. biebersteiniana (Rupr.) N.Busch
Paeonia tenuifolia var. brevifolia Prodan & Borza
Paeonia tenuifolia var. hybrida (Pall.) Lipsky
Paeonia tenuifolia var. laciniata Salm-Dyck
Paeonia tenuifolia var. latifolia Prodan & Borza
Paeonia tenuifolia var. latisecta Neilr.
Paeonia tenuifolia var. parviflora Huth
Paeonia tenuifolia var. plena D.Don

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.
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.