Dr Toichi Itoh brought us the most incredible hybridsIn the late 1940s, amid the rubble of the Second World War, Dr Toichi Itoh was quietly working away to make the world a more beautiful place. With a lifelong fascination for one of the most iconic flowers of his native Japan, he had the fantasy to cross herbaceous peonies with tree peonies, to create incredible hybrids the likes of which had never been seen before. A trained botanist, he knew that if he could pull this off, a phenomenon called hybrid vigour would probably mean this elusive union would result in enormous flowers that were not only larger, but longer-lasting and available in totally novel colour combinations.There was just one small problem with his ambition: it was thought totally impossible. Not only do the flowers of the two peonies tend to bloom weeks apart, even if you could get them to coincide, genetic incompatibilities between the two meant the crosses would never take, hence why centuries of dedicated breeding had never even come close. Continue reading…
Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Miraculous Itoh peonies are glorious
