One always sees Paeonia mlokosewitschii photographed with lovely pale yellow flowers, so I was a little disappointed when I grew it in the 1990s from seed collected in the wild by Josef Halda, and obtained a plant with ivory flowers flushed with pink. Two years ago I moved the plant to my new garden, and last spring and now again it has surprised me by flowering pale yellow without any pink. Could the difference in soil cause this? The soil in my old garden is high in iron and potassium, with very little organic matter. Now I'm gardening on dense but apparently nitrogen-rich clay that doesn't have the rust-red color of the soil in the old garden. I added a lot of composted organic matter to the planting areas. I don't like working with the clay but many of my plants are growing more robustly than they did in the former grit soil I noticed that pink roses in the old garden generally flowered darker than expected. Jane McGary Portland, Oregon, USA