It’s an unexpected synchronicity that, in a time of pandemic, when I decided to write about the peony, I discovered a close association with Paeon, the healer of the Greek Gods and the student of Asklepios, God of medicine and healing.
The name, Paeon, means ‘the healing’. Homer, in the Iliad, recounts how he cured Hades, God of the Underworld. After he’d been wounded by an arrow, Paeon ‘healed him by spreading soothing herbs on the wound’. He was regarded as a healer with a remedy for all ailments. One myth tells how Asklepios became jealous of his student’s success and threatened to kill him. Zeus saved Paeon by changing him into a flower, the peony.
The flower originated in China, where it’s been cultivated for 4000 years. It’s name means ‘beautiful’. In Chinese culture it symbolises riches, prosperity and honour. Until 1929, when they were replaced by cherry blossom, they were the national flower. They were popular during the Sui and Tang dynasties, and were planted in the Imperial Palace, hence the connection with wealth and honour. They are praised by Confucius, (551-479BCE) who liked to eat them.
Peonies were used in Chinese medicine before they were cultivated as garden flowers. The peony’s bark, roots, seeds and flowers were used in different remedies:
‘Mu Dan Pi, a remedy made from the bark of the tree peony, was believed to cool the blood and provide antiseptic properties. Chi Shao Yao, made from the roots of the herbaceous peony, was believed to cool the blood and provide pain relief…..…. The buds and leaves of the peony are used in China to make a delicate white tea which many believe to have medicinal qualities.’[1]
According to Walter Good, the bark and seeds were regarded as the most useful ingredients for medicine. The peony was a popular subject for Chinese artists, who often included the seeds alongside the flower.[2]
The peony reached Europe in the 1200’s. It was first cultivated by Benedictine monks in Switzerland, and is sometimes called the Benedictine rose. It features in an altar painting Maria im Rosenhag, by the artist Martin Schongauer (1448-91). Synchronistically, he was often called Martin Schon, Martin Beautiful.
As in China, the roots and seeds were used medicinally for a range of ailments including ‘bladder stones, jaundice, stomach ache, diarrhoea, labour pains, nightmares, epilepsy, and lunacy. According to historical sources, herb collectors in the Middle Ages had to take great care not to seen by a woodpecker while digging for peony roots, or the bird might peck out their eyes’. (Walter Good)
It was even effective at keeping evil spirits at bay. Rather sadly, peonies have not been used in Western medicine since the medieval period. [3] Don’t ask me how Paeon metamorphosed into the peony some centuries before it arrived in Europe.
While not as ubiquitous as the rose, the peony is celebrated in poetry. It features in many Japanese haiku, especially those from the Edo period, 1603-1868. While they often symbolised wealth, they:
‘could also be cast in a more sensual way, standing in paintings and poetry for female beauty and allure. However, peonies are not always used as metaphors, in some of these poems the flower itself is the muse.’[4]
Dusk on the flower
Of the white peony,
That embraces the moon.
– Gyodai
Contemporary poet Eileen Chong has a whole volume peony, with fifty poems about the flower.[5] Born in Singapore, of Chinese descent, but living in Australia, her poems interweave Chinese and Western traditions, in a unique and personal way.
‘Like the rose, so many shades of blood and white.
One birthday I woke to find peonies the shade
of night’s red stabbed in a vase. Their hearts:
so closed, so full of mystery. In seven days a shake
and the flowers would fall apart. I would taste
the naked heads: nothing, not even pollen, would remain.’
The American poet Grace Hazard Conkling has a poem with the wonderful title Diary Written on peony petals. Another American poet, Mary Oliver, intuits a correlation between human and flower in her poem, Peonies, which begins:
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
Here the peony becomes both a symbol and a manifestation of the joy in being alive, evoking the desire ‘to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?’ Like our lives, these flowers are splendid, but transitory. The petals usually drop after about seven days.
For me too, the peony evokes pain as well as joy. After my mother died, when I had to clear and sell her house, the peonies in the garden were the focus of the most intense heartbreak. They’d been transplanted from my grandfather’s garden, my childhood Eden. They were in a narrow border at the side of the house, marginalised and not very visible, but they flourished. Every year there was a mass of classic pink, multi-petalled, exuberant flowers. A sign of failing health and impending death, one autumn my mother was convinced the peonies had vanished from the garden. She suspected the neighbour had dug them up. Yet next summer there they were. In her defence, the neighbours were aghast at the wild profusion of flowers in her garden, when theirs were mainly paved or gravelled over. As she pointed out, hers was appreciated by the bees.
My mother lived to be 92. Perhaps the peonies in her garden were a similar or even a greater age. They too are now gone, forever. I'd rather be reminded of my transitoriness by a peony than by this pandemic.
[1]https://thesecretlanguageofflowers.wordpress.com/tag/peony/
[2]https://web.archive.org/web/20160313051423/http://www.paeonia.ch/welte/einfe1.htm
[3]https://www.ftd.com/blog/share/peony-meaning-and-symbolism
[4]https://www.treepeony.com/pages/japanese-peony-poems
[5]http://www.eileenchong.com.au/peony/
Grace Hazard Conkling poem accessible at
https://daily.jstor.org/seven-favorite-flower-poems/
Mary Oliver poem accessible at
https://afoxintheflowers.com/peonies-mary-oliver/
The name, Paeon, means ‘the healing’. Homer, in the Iliad, recounts how he cured Hades, God of the Underworld. After he’d been wounded by an arrow, Paeon ‘healed him by spreading soothing herbs on the wound’. He was regarded as a healer with a remedy for all ailments. One myth tells how Asklepios became jealous of his student’s success and threatened to kill him. Zeus saved Paeon by changing him into a flower, the peony.
The flower originated in China, where it’s been cultivated for 4000 years. It’s name means ‘beautiful’. In Chinese culture it symbolises riches, prosperity and honour. Until 1929, when they were replaced by cherry blossom, they were the national flower. They were popular during the Sui and Tang dynasties, and were planted in the Imperial Palace, hence the connection with wealth and honour. They are praised by Confucius, (551-479BCE) who liked to eat them.
Peonies were used in Chinese medicine before they were cultivated as garden flowers. The peony’s bark, roots, seeds and flowers were used in different remedies:
‘Mu Dan Pi, a remedy made from the bark of the tree peony, was believed to cool the blood and provide antiseptic properties. Chi Shao Yao, made from the roots of the herbaceous peony, was believed to cool the blood and provide pain relief…..…. The buds and leaves of the peony are used in China to make a delicate white tea which many believe to have medicinal qualities.’[1]
According to Walter Good, the bark and seeds were regarded as the most useful ingredients for medicine. The peony was a popular subject for Chinese artists, who often included the seeds alongside the flower.[2]
The peony reached Europe in the 1200’s. It was first cultivated by Benedictine monks in Switzerland, and is sometimes called the Benedictine rose. It features in an altar painting Maria im Rosenhag, by the artist Martin Schongauer (1448-91). Synchronistically, he was often called Martin Schon, Martin Beautiful.
As in China, the roots and seeds were used medicinally for a range of ailments including ‘bladder stones, jaundice, stomach ache, diarrhoea, labour pains, nightmares, epilepsy, and lunacy. According to historical sources, herb collectors in the Middle Ages had to take great care not to seen by a woodpecker while digging for peony roots, or the bird might peck out their eyes’. (Walter Good)
It was even effective at keeping evil spirits at bay. Rather sadly, peonies have not been used in Western medicine since the medieval period. [3] Don’t ask me how Paeon metamorphosed into the peony some centuries before it arrived in Europe.
While not as ubiquitous as the rose, the peony is celebrated in poetry. It features in many Japanese haiku, especially those from the Edo period, 1603-1868. While they often symbolised wealth, they:
‘could also be cast in a more sensual way, standing in paintings and poetry for female beauty and allure. However, peonies are not always used as metaphors, in some of these poems the flower itself is the muse.’[4]
Dusk on the flower
Of the white peony,
That embraces the moon.
– Gyodai
Contemporary poet Eileen Chong has a whole volume peony, with fifty poems about the flower.[5] Born in Singapore, of Chinese descent, but living in Australia, her poems interweave Chinese and Western traditions, in a unique and personal way.
‘Like the rose, so many shades of blood and white.
One birthday I woke to find peonies the shade
of night’s red stabbed in a vase. Their hearts:
so closed, so full of mystery. In seven days a shake
and the flowers would fall apart. I would taste
the naked heads: nothing, not even pollen, would remain.’
The American poet Grace Hazard Conkling has a poem with the wonderful title Diary Written on peony petals. Another American poet, Mary Oliver, intuits a correlation between human and flower in her poem, Peonies, which begins:
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
Here the peony becomes both a symbol and a manifestation of the joy in being alive, evoking the desire ‘to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?’ Like our lives, these flowers are splendid, but transitory. The petals usually drop after about seven days.
For me too, the peony evokes pain as well as joy. After my mother died, when I had to clear and sell her house, the peonies in the garden were the focus of the most intense heartbreak. They’d been transplanted from my grandfather’s garden, my childhood Eden. They were in a narrow border at the side of the house, marginalised and not very visible, but they flourished. Every year there was a mass of classic pink, multi-petalled, exuberant flowers. A sign of failing health and impending death, one autumn my mother was convinced the peonies had vanished from the garden. She suspected the neighbour had dug them up. Yet next summer there they were. In her defence, the neighbours were aghast at the wild profusion of flowers in her garden, when theirs were mainly paved or gravelled over. As she pointed out, hers was appreciated by the bees.
My mother lived to be 92. Perhaps the peonies in her garden were a similar or even a greater age. They too are now gone, forever. I'd rather be reminded of my transitoriness by a peony than by this pandemic.
[1]https://thesecretlanguageofflowers.wordpress.com/tag/peony/
[2]https://web.archive.org/web/20160313051423/http://www.paeonia.ch/welte/einfe1.htm
[3]https://www.ftd.com/blog/share/peony-meaning-and-symbolism
[4]https://www.treepeony.com/pages/japanese-peony-poems
[5]http://www.eileenchong.com.au/peony/
Grace Hazard Conkling poem accessible at
https://daily.jstor.org/seven-favorite-flower-poems/
Mary Oliver poem accessible at
https://afoxintheflowers.com/peonies-mary-oliver/