Peony

No peony sold in Los Angeles was grown in California

It is worth saying plainly, because plenty of shops imply otherwise. There is no commercial peony crop in this state. Every peony in this collection has been flown in, from Alaska, from Holland, from Chile or New Zealand once the northern season closes, and that is as true in May as it is in November.

One consequence: peonies are the flower where we can least promise you a price. The northern hemisphere crop peaks in May and June, Alaska runs from late July into August, and in those weeks peonies are plentiful and sensible money. The rest of the year they come out of cold storage, the cost climbs, and the share of buds that never open climbs with it. We still buy them, because people want them, but we open the boxes at the market before they leave it.

Room temperature is the control knob

A peony arrives as a tight ball somewhere between a marble and a golf ball, and the room decides the rest. Somewhere cool, around 65°F, it takes three to five days to open. Put the identical stem on a sunny sill and it will be wide open by the next morning and finished two days later.

Which is why the useful thing to tell us is the date. Dinner on Saturday and you are ordering on Thursday, we choose tighter buds and tell you to keep them warm. Wanted open tonight, we choose stems that are already cracking. Almost nobody says this when they order peonies, and it matters more than the colour.

Three small things worth knowing

• A bud that gives slightly under a gentle squeeze, like a marshmallow, will open. One that feels like a stone frequently will not.
• Leave the dull outer guard petals alone. They protect the head and fall away by themselves.
• Peonies drink hard on the first day. Top the vase up that evening, not the next morning.

If the window has closed and the price has gone somewhere you did not intend, ranunculus in March and April gives you a similar layered head for a fraction of it, and garden roses do the same from late spring. Substituting without telling you is the part we refuse, and the reasoning is in things I tell customers they do not want to hear.