Peony bouquets: the first two days decide the rest
Nobody complains about a peony in full bloom. The complaints all arrive in the first hour, when the box opens and the flowers inside are hard green-pink balls the size of a walnut, nothing like the photograph.
That is the correct state for a delivered peony, and it is worth knowing before the lid comes off.
Warmth is the switch
A tight bud opens on temperature, not on time. Kept somewhere cool it can sit almost unchanged for days, and moved into a warm room it will unfold within a day, sometimes overnight.
So the timing is in your hands rather than the grower's. If the flowers are wanted open for a particular evening, put them in warm water in the warmest room you have and strip the lower leaves, since foliage competes for the same water. If they have arrived too early for the occasion, move the vase to the coolest corner in the flat and keep it away from radiators after dark.
There is a manual trick for the stubborn ones. Roll the closed ball gently between your fingers to break the seal of dried nectar that glues the outer petals together, then leave it alone.
One kind of bud never opens at all. A head that feels like a stone and gives nothing under light pressure was cut too early in the field, and no amount of warm water changes that.
What happens once they go
An open peony is a different flower and needs different handling. The head roughly triples in width, so a bunch that looked modest in the wrapping will crowd its vase and needs either a wider container or a thinning out. Petals shed at the end rather than the head collapsing, and they shed suddenly, usually across a single afternoon.
Expect the drop and put the vase somewhere you do not mind sweeping.
The scent behaves the same way. It is faint while the bud is closed and arrives properly only after opening, sweet and slightly lemony in the pale varieties, heavier in the deep pink ones.
Two practical notes
Ants are normal on garden-grown stems and harmless. They come for the nectar on the outside of the bud, they do not damage the flower, and a shake outdoors before the bouquet comes inside deals with them.
Season is the other thing that shapes what you can order. Locally grown peonies have one short window in early summer, and outside it the flowers on the counter have been shipped in from places with the opposite growing season, cut tighter and cooled for the journey. Winter stems therefore start their vase life a step behind, and the first days are spent opening rather than looking their best.
Peony bouquets suit people who will be at home to watch them, which is most of the point. Someone travelling the day after receiving one gets the closed version and nothing else, so for a recipient in Batumi who is away a great deal, the flowers are better sent to arrive at the start of a quiet week.
