"MallowKat" wrote in message
I bought a tiny little plant at a coffee morning claiming to be a tree
peony.As
I've never grown peonies before, am I right in thinking peonies are
herbaceous
whereas tree peonies are shrubs?

Tree peonies will, very slowly, grow a stem or stems which remain after the
leaves have gone in the autumn, whereas normal peonies loose all top growth
every year and simply come up from ground level.
TP's are slow growing BTW.
One of mine, when it got to about 18inches of stem for some reason died back
to ground level again causing me to think I'd lost it, but it is now just
shooting from the roots again.

--
Regards
Bob

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