Morphological characteristics and variability of seed production components of Paeonia lactiflora Pall. in Yakut botanical garden

The aim of this work was to study the variability of morphological features and components of seed production of Paeonia lactiflora Pall. in Yakutsk Botanical Garden. Observing objects were plants of different ages, grown from seed. The seeds were obtained from plants of different regions and plants were grown in Yakut Botanical Garden. These bio-metric data was processed by the program PAST. In the conditions of central Yakutia at the plants of Paeonia lactiflora of different origin and age aver-age and high variability of generative structures were installed. Plants of middle age (12 years) had very high averages of potential and real seed productivity of generative shoot (147.3 and 92.7 seed respectively). Young generative plants (5 years) had the fruits formed in all flowers and a higher index of seed production (67.4 %) than the middle-aged plants. Individual seeds with out-growths formed by adheres funiculuses were identi-fied. The highest average seed weight was 115 mg in seven-year plant, the minimum weight was 18 mg in five-year plant in the first year of fruiting. The seeds in size and weight had more magnitude of variation and slight differences of mean values compared to the seeds formed in the south of Western Siberia (in the Central Siberian Botanical Garden SB RAS). However in Central Yakutia on average annual data of trend of formation of less thick but viable seeds was shown. On the basis of the evaluation component of seed production and their variability can be argued that Paeonia lactiflo-ra is one of the most promising species of herba-ceous ornamental plants for green building in the central and southern regions of Yakutia. Regular formation of fruit with numerous viable seeds con-tributes to reliable preservation of this species in the culture, its successful reproduction and distribu-tion as ornamental plants.