closest in appearance to the California peony, with which it constitutes the section Onaepia. Common characters include having rather small drooping flowers, with small petals and a very prominent disk which usually consists of separate segments, while the seeds are cylindrical rather than ovoid. P. browniii can still be easily distinguished from P. californica however, the latter having 35–75 cm high stems bearing seven to twelve leaves which are green, while the leaflet blade gradually eases into the leaflet stalk or lacks such a stalk all together, and the finest lobes are lanceolate or narrowly elliptic. P. brownii is usually only 20–40 cm high, has six to eight glaucous leaves per stem that suddenly narrow at their base and the finest segments are egg-shaped. In P. californica the petals are egg-shaped, and about 1½-2½ cm long, reaching beyond the sepals, while in P. brownii the petals are circular or wider than long, and about ¾-1½ cm long, definitely shorter than the sepals. Taxonomy Paeonia brownii was first described in 1829 by David Douglas in the Flora boreali-americana which was edited by Hooker. No synonyms for this scientific name are known. Paeonia californica has been regarded a subspecies of P. brownii, but there are several morphological differences, the environmental circumstances in which each grows are different and the distributions of both species do not overlap, so currently there seems to be consensus that both need to be regarded as separate species. Paeonia brownii and P. californica together make up the section Onaepia of the genus Paeonia. Precise relationships between the three sections remain ambiguous, and can be represented by the following phylogenetic tree. Etymology The species is named after Scottish botanist Robert Brown. Distribution Brown's peony grows in open dry pine forests such as stands of ponderosa pine, in sagebrush, in mountain brush, and in aspen stands at elevations of 200–3,000 m, where winters are long and cold, with little to no snow cover and the growing season is short. It occurs in northern California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. It is not native to Canada. P. brownii is very specific when it comes to soil conditions. It will not thrive where the soil is excessively wet, nor if the soil becomes too dry. It performs best in well-drained situations. Ecology In the Blue Mountains at about 1050 m altitude, P. brownii grows in an upland prairie on