A comparative study was conducted on Zhongyuan (130, Chinese) and Daikon Island (37, Japanese) tree peony cultiiars to analyze anthocyanin constitutions in the petals in relation to flower colors. The distribution of flower hues displayed by loci of colors on a UELAB (International Commission on Illumination) diagram was found to be similar between cultivars of the two areas. However, the flower colors of a traditional classification did not correspond with the CIELAB hues. An identification by chemical structure of three anthocyanidins in the petals (pelargonidin, Pg; cyanidin, Cy and peonidin, Pn) classified the cultiiars into four flower groups, i.e. Pn, Pg; Pn, Pg>Cy; Pn, Cy and Pn,Cy > Pg groups. Each group consequently specified significant features among CIELAB color notation and petal pigmentation, being adequate to characterize tree peony flowers as similar between Zhongyuan and Daikon Island cultivars, thus the cultivars of the two areas are suggested to be related to one another.

Petal pigment compositions were used as markers to study the phenetic relationships among seven wild tree peony species of Paeonia section Moutan DC. (fifteen accessions) from China. As the pigment markers, five anthocyanins together with three flavone and three flavonol aglycones were used. Principal component analysis (PCA) provided five eigenvectors from nineteen pigment patterns, in which peonidin and cyanidin as well as the types of glycosides greatly influenced the first factor, Z1. The Euclidean distances of standardized values obtained by eigenvector matrices with five factors (Zl to Z5) produced a dendrogram in Ward's minimum variance cluster analysis, which showed good agreement with a classification based on the morphological characteristics of two subsections Vaginatae F.C. Stern and Delavayanae F.C. Stern. The results obtained by PCA and clustering qualify a chemical classification of section Moutan using secondary metabolites, specifically flower pigments, as taxonomic markers.

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