Morphological Variation and Diversity in Populations of Paeonia lutea

Morphological variation and biodiversity of Paeonia lutea were investigated by observing and measuring twelve characters.It indicated that variations in flower were much more than that in leaf,in the highest variation coefficient was 0.252 2 in calyx,followed by carpel and bract.Higher genetic diversity indices existed respectively in petal color,shape of petal apex and stains of petal base.Whereas,width of leaf had a higher variation(0.160 3).It also showed that three of twelve characters,flower color,stains of sepal base and bract had higher contribution-rate than nine indices left,whose component matrixes were much higher.Twenty two clones were divided into three types by Euclidean distance clustering.Types of P.lutea could be preliminarily distinguished by three characters: sepal color,shape of stains and bract amounts.S'ib ship could also be judged by provenance,sepal color,shape of stains,calyx and bract amounts.