The Language of Peonies

On a short season of flowers and perhaps, of everything

It is peony season in the Northern Hemisphere. Truthfully, this is the first year I have really noticed peonies. And when I say, noticed, I mean they are everywhere. Every chic woman on Instagram, and IRL is carrying a bright spring bouquet of peonies, subtly juxtaposed with a cool-weather trench coat because a) trench coats always look chic and b) unpredictable London spring weather. I too have taken to photographing¹ peonies this month. First, it was a bouquet I bought at a grocery store with my daughter a couple of weeks ago where we had to decide between the peonies or the discounted roses. “Let’s try the London trench-coat-chic-peony-girl trend,” I said. “They are only a couple of pounds more and we can get roses anytime.” She nodded and picked out peonies perfectly matching her pink tee.

Peony species come in two distinct growth habits.

Different varieties bloom at slightly different times.

Peonies open up to three times their original size.

The peony is a traditional floral symbol of China; the Paeonia suffruticosa is called 牡丹 (mǔdān). It is also known as 富貴花 (fùguìhuā) "flower of riches and honour" or 花王 (huawang) "king of the flowers", and is used symbolically in Chinese art.²

The grocery store buds bloomed overnight and as soon as I began revelling in the layers of petals and their changing hues, it was over. (I have since learnt, peonies have a short vase life.) Now, on the table in my kitchen as I write this, is a bouquet I received as part of the most wonderful gift last year after the double whammy of my life-changing surgery and my father’s death, a subscription to monthly bouquets from one of my dearest and most cherished friends. In this month’s arrangement, there are five pink peonies, three have opened, one is starting to, and the last is still a bud. I am mesmerised by the layer upon layer of soft petals, no end and no beginning, and I can’t get enough of the sweet smell, sniffing the bouquet every time I pass by.

The arrangement arrived on the same day as a few last-minute gifts for my son, who turned 11 last week. My children’s birthdays make me nostalgic for both their baby years of the past and for the upcoming years, the ones that have yet to happen but that I know will pass by far too quickly. On the weeks around each of my children’s birthdays, I often find myself in a deep melancholy, staring at baby photos of them on my phone wishing time to slow down. I try to imagine them as newborns, as toddlers, as preschoolers, with each age, a distinct little human. Distinct growth habits.

While the peony takes several years to re-establish itself when moved, it blooms annually for decades once it has done so.

Herbaceous and Itoh peonies are propagated by root division, and sometimes by seed.

Herbaceous peonies such as Paeonia lactiflora, will die back to ground level each autumn. Their stems will reappear the following spring.

Same flowers as above only a few days earlier. Peonies change colours so quickly.

I did what I always do when something (or someone) piques my interest: I started googling “peonies” and “interesting things about peonies”. A wealth of not only fascinating facts emerged, but in my mind, analogies and metaphors galore! It all reminded me of one of my favourite newsletters by

Adam Aleksic

about how the algorithm is killing coincidences and what that means for language. As Aleksic writes, our first instinct when we come across a coincidence is to tell a story. Not everything has meaning, random coincidences are real, but they can also foster human connection, or in this case musings on what my newfound appreciation for peonies, at this very moment in time and in my life, can teach me, or at least help me to understand about life.

Peonies remind me of paper flowers, makeshift bouquets created by little hands at nursery for Mother’s Day, symbolising both a fragility with their paper-thin petals, but also a robustness because losing one metal when you have 50 is insignificant.³ You shed a few layers and there are many more left in bloom.⁴ Peony season is short, a blink-and-you-will-miss-it kind of way, perhaps why I have never noticed it before in the spring and early summer frenzy of parenting and life. And yet, when planted, peonies can live up to 100 years — how is that for a parenting analogy: the longest shortest time!

With so much never-ending pain and suffering and stupidity in the world, peonies are a welcome (and beyond privileged) distraction for me right now. Except when they too are the subject of bad news. When I read about the peony garden in Michigan being destroyed, via one of my other favourite newsletters by

Roxane Gay

, some of the quotes by those interviewed about the destruction were as much about a peony garden as they were about so many other things happening in the world right now:

“These peonies are not just plants, they are living beings…They’ve been nurtured over generations and bring joy, community, and connection to the natural world for so many people every season.”

“What happened here was an act of disregard not just for the garden, but for the community and really to life itself…Yet, this is a resilient garden. It will bloom – it will be fine.”

And then, I did my own search online about the vandalism and realised through other media outlets that the destruction of a garden was the point: flowers make great analogies and metaphors but they are not human life. If only those who cared for the living peonies cared as much for living people, who also bring joy, community and connection to the natural world.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence I only noticed peony season this year for the first time because I am different this year. I am noticing more, appreciating more, enjoying more. I am also worried about more, sad about more, continuously shocked by people and the choices they make much, much more. I, as we all are if we pay attention, am constantly surrounded by reminders of the fragility of life in a million different forms. For some, it takes a bit longer to get here, for others, it is a way of life. As Ocean Vuong recently said in an interview, the world has always been on fire. As a writer, I choose to enter a lineage of despair.

I call this a crayola/peony petal still life. As quickly as the flowers bloom, they fall.

But for a moment, in this very short season of the peony, perhaps we can all take a page (petal?!) from the flower. Like a peonies, we all have distinct growth habits, we all bloom at slightly different times, we have short solitary “vase lives” if cut (from community, for example), but can “live” a very long time if planted in a garden. Like peonies, it takes time to re-establish ourselves when moved or altered, we need time to reappear after periods of “dying” to ground level. And if I ever heard a great analogy for raising multilingual children, like peonies, we are propagated by root division. Interpret this how you wish but I offer my take: we offer our (linguistic) roots and our children use them to create their own.

But most importantly, in language but especially in life, if given the chance to bloom, we open up three times our original size. And with that size, we all need to start caring about other humans more, above anything else.

As always, thank you for reading.

Now, go find some peonies, send me a photo and if you can, donate.

1. Apparently #peonies has been used over 2 million times on Instagram!

2. If this is incorrect in its translation and meaning, I blame Wikipedia.

3. Unlike tulips where the loss of one petal changes the flower drastically.

4. What a metaphor! I have learnt however, this varies depending on the type of peony, some don’t have as many petals but I am far from a peony expert - see the Wikipedia comment above.