Peonies. as a rule, do not come true from seed, you can get all sorts of beautiful flowers from one peony seed head. From Krinkled White I got a double light pink, a single deep pink, and a single pink/white.
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Yes, I know that, this is why I took three seedlings 
. I probably could take 33, but I have no place to put them all 
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Thanks.
Yeah, leaving it where it is and moving in the fall is not an option. It’s in the middle of the lawn, and I don’t think being mown and walked on will be better for it than being transplanted. And if I didn’t mow, it would be shorter than the established grass around it, and I expect it would lose the competition.
Even “don’t disturb the soil near the root” is problematic, as that soil is chock-a-block full of grass roots. It’s literally poking up in the middle of healthy established grass. I’ll try to do some soil-surgery and cut away the turf, and slide out the root from the side, with as much wet soil sticking to it as possible. Shade, huh.
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Dig carefully, the root may go down a long way and you can cut off the leaf stem before you reach the tiny tuber. I would remove the grass with my hands pulling up the grass roots. Once you get it out of the ground you can probably stick it into a bucket of water and gently wash off all the dirt and grass roots. Grass roots grow right thru the peony roots and can be a bugger to remove once the root is large and they are entwined within, this is what makes some grasses a particularly tiresome weed in a peony field. Once you have it clean you can pot it up to care for it better and then plant it in the fall when it goes dormant. If you plant it now you will have to make sure it does not get too dry or too wet. Peonies put out the best roots in cool weather, that is why most peony growers only sell roots in the fall.
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Is it realistic to cut the grass level with the soil, and smother it with plastic, cardboard, or carpet? Would Grass B Gone kill the peony? It is not supposed to kill broadleaf plants.
I think it would be better to dig 6 inches too deep than 1/4 inch too shallow.
No. Partly, I don’t know if I could do that. But partly, while I think it’s fun to have a seedling peony from the bush, it’s not close to worth it to me to kill off that patch of lawn and mow around it all summer just to modestly improve the odds that it will survive.
This weekend I’ll dig it up, gently remove the grass as per northof53’s advice, and put it in one of my irrigated pots. I may rig some shade for it. Whenever the leaf dies down (hopefully due to seasonal dormancy) I’ll transplant it someplace where it can try to establish itself. And either it will make it or it won’t.
I have no idea if grass B gone is fine for peonies, it very well could be but I don’t believe we can buy it in Canada, at least I have never been able to find it, so I have never used it.
I meant after you remove it from the lawn, not smother the grass in place.
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Ah, i misunderstood.
I’m a little worried about digging it out, but not really about removing the grass. I’m fairly good at disentangling roots. It helps if the soil is wet.
Also, I don’t really enjoy playing with toxic chemicals. My yard is mostly organic, and mostly non-toxic.
Sadly, it had sprouted right next to a sharp rock, and when I leveraged the chunk of soil up with the spade, the rock cut the stem from the root. I planted both pieces in a pot. I will be astonished if the stem survives, but the root might. The root was quite long, maybe 6" or more.
I had trouble finding the root, as there were a LOT of roots in that soil. But I found a straight, inflexible root that smelled slightly of peony. We’ll see, and oh well.
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The stem would only survive if it has a piece of the tuber attached. The little tuber might live if it was large enough to make a secondary eye. Wait and see, peonies are extremely hardy. We revamped half of a small peony field one year, dug up all the peonies and tilled it all with a cultivator. I am now using it as a vegetable garden and I have peonies coming up all over the place like weeds.
I feel your pain, I have dug many, many little seedlings and it is amazing how easy it is to cut that stem off.
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The stem has a bit of tuber attached, but I think it’d far too small to root and survive. 
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I’ll add another peony story here. A few years ago I was charmed by a potted tree peony at a garden shop that sported an enormous, crepe-like pink flower. It was labeled “Yachiyo Tsubaki”.
I had tons of trouble with that plant. It was grafted to an herbaceous peony, and it was a constant struggle to keep the herbaceous one from overtaking the whole plant.
But I really liked the flower, so I bought another, from Songsparrow. But that’s not the same plant. The one I bought originally had enormous single blossoms, and the one from Songsparrow has large double blossoms. It’s a fine peony, but not what I was looking for. fwiw, pictures on the internet suggest that “Yachiyo Tsubaki” is what Songsparrow sent me, and the one I bought impulsively was mis-labeled.
Anyway, three years ago, I transplanted the thing, and noticed that there was a bit of root emerging from the tree peony stem. So I conducted surgery and removed herbaceous root. Only I didn’t get it all, and damn, it’s more vigorous than the tree peony… so two years ago I tried again, very aggressively. Last year it didn’t look great, but it survived and even had a flower. Then, this spring, I found that the entire part above the ground died over the winter.
But hope springs eternal! Today I saw that there are sprouts coming from underground. And I’m pretty sure these are tree peony sprouts, not the herbaceous one. So today I attacked the grass growing around it, gave it some fertilizer, covered the earth with newspaper, and covered the newspaper with mulch, keeping it away from the stems. And surrounded the whole thing with a cage to protect it from deer.
I hope I didn’t over-feed it.
Wish me luck. 
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You should be able to grow a tree peony, the herbaceous roots are only there to give the tree some time to form their own roots but I guess they can take over if the conditions are right. Good luck I hope it grows for you.
Out of curiosity, do you know why it’s so common to graft tree peonies to herbaceous roots? Are they otherwise very hard to propagate?
The one from Songsparrow was a dinky little thing when it arrived, but at least I haven’t had to constantly fight it and trim back unwanted herbaceous growth. I don’t think I looked to see what’s underground, but it’s supporting the tree peony top, whatever it is.
They apparently graft them to give the tree peony roots from which to feed until they can create their own root system.
Itoh peonies are the best of both worlds. They are a cross between a herbaceous and a tree peony. They flower like the tree peony but behave like the herbaceous. This allows for those in colder zones to grow the beautiful flowers. One of the most beautiful Itoh IMO is Bartzella, a lovely deep yellow.
Are these peonies or tree peonies? This thread may help someone whos grafting seedlings or wanting photos for reference https://growingfruit.org/t/japanese-tree-peony/13515 or Low maintenance perennial flower garden. Like everyone else posting i want to see the seedling peony i think seedlings are very cool!
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I seem to have acquired some infection that kills tree peonies. At least, the rockii is doing very poorly, and gets smaller every year. I don’t recall what happened to the seedling, but it probably died.
The peony from Song Sparrow is fairly far away, and it is planted in shade. It’s certainly not growing fast, but seems okay. The impulse purchase may have caught the bug, though. Or maybe it’s just suffered in this year’s drought. I do seem to have finally removed the aggressive herbaceous root, though, so it will live or die as a tree peony.
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