Short answer: no. Herbaceous peonies are propagated by division.

-=beeky

A longer answer is maybe. Some peonies have adventisous roots. Root pieces of these can and normally will grow. Some of the corals are well known for this. Do some research.

Plantek does tissue culture on peonies.

Well, I would say the answer is a lot closer to no than yes. Root pieces will not produce a new plant unless at least one dormant bud is present. If you have roots and buds you have a division not a cutting.

Tissue culture is technically cutting propagation where the cutting is composed of a couple of hundred undifferentiated cells but I don't think this is what the poster was asking.

-=b

Sorry Beeky you need to do some additional study on peonies.
Even the APS mentions in the second paragraph that some will form plants without bud eyes.

Lindsey D'Aoust on her website has a very good information for peonies.

Here is a link that might be useful: APS on plants

My uneducated guess is that tree peony cuttings will root; would be interesting to try.

I have had deer damaged branches root when I stuck in dirt just beside the original plant. Several books mention various ways for tree peony rooting but they neglect to state if using old or new wood. The exception is to one that cut the newly emerging buds from the stem section, put in moist sand, and covered, placed in an out of the way place. This I am going to attempt this year.

I don't want to turn this into a flame war but here is a quote from the APS page you cited:

"The common lactiflora peonies are not able to form adventitious buds. A root that does not already have an existing bud will not form one"

Another piece of evidence is tree peony propagation. The majority of tree peonies are propagated by nurse grafting using lactiflora roots that have had the crown removed. If these lactiflora roots were capable of producing a new plant then every tree peony would also have an herbacious peony growing from its base.

In more than 30 years of growing peonies I've see exactly one tree peony whose lactiflora root produced growth. An inspection of this plant revealed that the crown of the nurse graft had not been removed prior to grafting.

--beeky

Beeky, my tree peonies' lactifora roots produce shoots almost every year. It's because I did not sit the plant low enough when I planted it but tree peonies lactiflora roots definitely produce growth. It isn't unusual.

It isn't difficult to differentiate the tree peony stems and leaves from the lactiflora stems and leaves that come up. They look very different.

Check out the book "Peonies" by Alan Rogers. I believe he answers the question about adventitious buds quite nicely. If you go to page 117, "Propagation by Root Cuttings" you'll find some very interesting reading.

If I happen to cut into a peony root by mistake, I always plant the root. Once in a while one will grow. 2 that I remember are Chocolate Soldier and Cytheria. I have tried Glowing Raspberry Rose several times, but nothing ever happens.

I bought a "bowl of beauty" off ebay many years ago. though my mom always grew them and had to tend little care to hers, mine seem to struggle and took this one almost 3-4 years to produce some gorgeous heart warming blooms finally. I bought it as a bare root and after its last blooms (last week) i noticed it has some seed pods. if let to produce- would these seeds produce viable flower producing offspring? if so i'd love to be able to propagate my beautiful Bowl of Beauty.

thanks, Gail.

Since Bowl of Beauty is a japanese type of flower it is unlikely that there will be any seeds in the pods. But if there are go for it. Wait until pods start opening. If no seeds cut the pods lower on the stem and dry for a nice addtion to a floral display

Maifleur, were you successful in this approach? You wrote:
Several books mention various ways for tree peony rooting but they neglect to state if using old or new wood. The exception is to one that cut the newly emerging buds from the stem section, put in moist sand, and covered, placed in an out of the way place. This I am going to attempt this year.

I have not been successful but I do have a friend that tried it a couple of years before I met him who was successful. His complaint was that it was too slow of a method when you could make grafts quicker. I keep meaning to try both of the methods but so far have forgotten to look for new buds in June.

I did have success in having damaged stems root when deer broke off an entire branch. Just stuck it in the soft winter soil and I was lucky it developed roots.