Article (magazine)  (2001)  
 
Paeonia delavayi Franch....
KEY TO VARIETIES
1. Shrub more than 1 m tall (usually up to c. 1.8 m):...... 1. var. delavayi
1. Shrub or subshrub up to not more than 1 m tall:..... 2. var. angustiloba
2. var. angustiloba Rehder & Wilson in Sarg., Pl. Wilson. 1: 318 (1913)...

KEY TO FORMAS
1. Petals red or dark red to purplish-red:...... 2a. var. angustiloba f. angustiloba
This name includes the typical 'P. potaninii', a low-growing plant with deep maroon-red flowers.

Book  (Jan 2000)  Page(s) 51.  
 
Stern's second subsection of tree peonies, subsection Delavayanae, includes several species discovered in the mountains of Southwestern China toward the end of the 19th century. In it, he identified and defined the following species:
....Paeonia potaninii Komarov
Found in northwest Yunnan and west Sichuan Provinces. This is a smaller plant than Paeonia lutea in most respects, with deeply divided, fine leaflets and rather small red flowers. In cultivation, white- and yellow-flowered forms have appeared; the yellow form was described in 1943 as variety trolliodes (Stapf ex W. T. Stearn). Diploid (10 chromosomes).
...Even the recalcirant Paeonia potaninii has recently been crossed successfully. This species increases well by stolons - a trait not usually found in tree peonies - which accelerates the number of plants produced. One modern hybridizer whose specialty is intersectional hybrids saw its potential and explored further...

Book  (Jan 2000)  Page(s) 129.  
 
...Anderson has successfully hybridized the rare, shrubby tree peony species, Paeonia potaninii. His present pursuits in form and color are a tiny, container-sized plant with teacup size flowers and a true orange.

Book  (Jan 1999)  Page(s) 20.  
 
Paeonia potaninii named in memory of the eminent Russian explorer and naturalist Grigori Potanin in 1921. It has the unique characteristic of spreading by underground stolons...

Article (magazine)  (Jan 1955)  Page(s) 13-14.  
 
Paeonia potanini Komarov, Not. Syst. Herb. Hort. Bot. Petrop., 1921.
Discovered by and named for Grigory Nokolajelitsch Potanin.
Syn. P . angustiloba Stapf in MS. in the Kew Herbarium, unpublished.
P. delavayi angustiloba Rehder & Wilson, in Plant. Wilson. 1913.
Wilson collected this in Szechwan on border of Yunnan at ten thousand feet in 1904. Lemoine introduced it into commerce in 1920 under the name given by Rehder and Wilson. It will probably commonly be called the Potanin peony, or the narrow-lobed peony. Plant stoloniferous. The segments and lobes of the leaves mostly three-sixteenths to three-eighths an inch wide. Only in the lower part of the less dissected upper segments are they as wide as three-fourths. Flowers up to two and one-quarter inches, maroon red, opening widely, stamens yellow. The pinnatifid leaves, cut into very narrow lobes, are graceful and a bright green, and the plant deserves to be grown for its foliage alone. The plant is not as tall as P. delavayi.

Article (magazine)  (Jan 1955)  Page(s) 22.  
 
Similar differences of opinion greeted later discoveries by the botanist, Potanin, and the great explorer, George Forrest. Potanin's plant, which had maroon flowers, was regarded by the Kew botanist, Stapf, as a species, and named by him in an unpublished manuscript P. angustiloba. Rehder and Wilson promptly (in 1913) reduced this to P. delavayi variety angustiloba, and a few plants got into the trade under that name. The Russian botanist, Komarov, in 1921, put it back as a true species and named it, for its discoverer, P. potanini.

Article (magazine)  (Jan 1955)  Page(s) 59.  
 
Alphabetical Check List of Tree Peony Names In  Public Collections And/or Available in Nurseries 1954-1955
potanini, [Gardens] University of Washington Arboretum. See under species

Article (magazine)  (Jan 1955)  Page(s) 12.  
 
P. delavayi Franchet....angustiloba- Now given specific rank as P. potanini -which see.