The Peonies at the Arboretum

Last year I discovered an annual event at Nichols Arboretum, namely the blooming of the peonies.  Since it's been pretty warm the past couple of weeks, I found out that they were coming out earlier than nomral.  Since I caught them late last year, I wanted to catch them at just about the right time this year.  I think I did.
Many of the plants in this collection are over 100 years old and have been maintained since then, so I would have to say that it is pretty impressive.  I believe there are also some rare specimins in the group.  Many of these flowers were donated to the university.

 These are not peonies but most of the following flowers are.  Since I'm not about to identify the different types, I will let the flowers speak for themselves for the most part.

I would say that the bulk of the collection is white and look very similar to this flower.

There are also quite a few with pink highlights.  I'm not sure if this is because of crossbreeding or this is the way they appear.

 I really like the center part because it looks like some sort of science fiction movie monster.

If I remember from doing this last year, this one is an anemone version.

 I was trying to get multiple views of the flowers.  Let me know which ones work the best.

I really like some of the deeper pink flowers.

 I was amazed at the variety of colors.

Although the burgandy ones are pretty cool too.  The light was just about right but in some cases almost overbearing.

In some cases, it really brought out the highlights though.

I tried to get a couple shots where the flower was balanced against the sky but I couldn't get low enough to get some of the trees out of the way.

This one seems to be an array of colors.

I really like the centers of some of the flowers.

This one almost reminded me of a cloud.

A shot of the array of flowers.  I'm not really sure about this one though.  I probably should have bumped the f-stop down a bit to get more blur to the background.

 These were in a different part of the Arb and not a peony.

I think this one is the same type of flower but different color.

A yellow version.

Another shot of a group of flowers.

As I said, it was pretty sunny out and the light was catching some of the flowers just right.

 I was watching this guy flit from flower to flower and this picture was completely accidental.

 They say good things come in threes.

Another one with a nice grouping of colors.

 A closeup of the center.

I am hoping that I can get to the Arboretum again before the blooms start to wilt.  I'm not sure that is going to happen since I'm going to be gone for the next week.  I was glad that I got the opportunity to go down there though.