Although I've often thought about planting peonies, I never have done so, so I'm afraid I can't help with the blight question.

You seem to be having trouble posting your photos though. I might be able to help you with that. The url to your web album that shows your 4 pictures is
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/578192480GvkIsB
and people can click on each thumbnail to see full sized photos.

The code that you would use to make a photo appear within your message in this forum is as follows but with the all the spaces (except the space between img and src) removed and the url of the photo in place of XXXXX.

However when I tried it out in the preview function with the url to your first photo, it does not appear. I think the web hosting site you are using will not permit posting photos on other websites using their band width. Thus I think you are limited to posting links to your web albums.

I hope this helps. Sorry I'm no help with the peony disease.

Thanks so much for your help spedigrees. I appreciate you taking the time to break it down for me and will try on another photo site again soon. :)

I have never seen anything like that on my peonies. They do get powdery mildew now and then, otherwise the foliage is usually pretty attractive through the season. The mature established peonies held up pretty well against this heat with little watering.

That's a shame if you have to pull up a new plant. Perhaps it's worth getting a refund?

Hmmm. I have a lot of peonies, and have seen various foliage problems with some of them, but haven't seen anything exactly like this. (I just cut and pasted the link into a new browser window, and that worked fine.)

I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but we need a few more (words) here. Is all the foliage effected, or just part of the plant? Did you look at the underside of the leaves to see if there's any evidence of insects? When was this planted? Peonies are best moved in the fall, and it might be a reaction to the heat we've had recently. Is there any chance that there's too much fertilizer? Have you committed any overhead watering? Any watering in direct sunlight?

If that were my plant, I'd just leave it alone, but I'd also send a photo to my extension service, and/or bring a copy to the nursery where I purchased the plant. Some years many of my peonies look awful in late summer, and the next year they're fabulous again.

Thanks all for your input. Spoke with the nursery and they directed me to dig up and throw away as it sounded like blight and they said it wasn't worth the risk. The plant had that discoloring on every leaf, on top not bottom. It started before I even got to plant it into the ground.

I had watered in direct sunlight but after the prob. on leaves showed up. No fertilizer added when planting except a little composted manure.

When I dug it up the roots hadn't spread out from original area planted and they looked white but weak... guess I'll never know what it really was but I feel bad I dumped it. You really get attached to plants man. :(