Paeonia daurica can be found from the Balkans to Iran, and the Crimea to Lebanon, with the centre of its distribution in the Caucasus.

Paeonia daurica is a perennial herbaceous photosynthesising plant, emerging in spring and retreating underground in the autumn.

At the very centre of each flower are one to five carpels that are glabrous, sparsely to densely covered in felty hairs and almost directly tipped by the stigmas which are mostly curved or S-shaped from above.

mlokosewitschii usually has inverted egg-shaped leaves with a rounded ends that very suddenly develop into small but sharp tips, with its undersides mostly sparsely or rather densely covered soft hairs, but sometimes hairless.

Its flowers have one to three hairless or sparsely felty carpels and yellow petals that may have a pink spot at the base.

tomentosa can be distinguished by leaflets with a mostly dense covering of felty hairs on the lower surface and on the carpels.

[4] Paeonia daurica was first described by Henry Cranke Andrews in the seventh volume of his Botanist's Repository published in 1807.

Russian botanist Nikolai Michailowitsch Albow was the first to think that a difference only in petal colour does not merit distinguishing species, and he reduced P. wittmanniana to P. corallina var.

Nikolai Schipczinsky in the Flora of the USSR (1937) distinguished between P. mlokosewitschii – as part of the series Obovatae having orbicular, ovate or rarely pointed leaflets – and P. triternata, P. caucasica, P. wittmanniana, P. macrophylla, P. tomentosa and P. abchasica – all having rather wide, pointed leaflets – assigning them to the series Corallinae.

Frederick Claude Stern in his book A study of the genus Paeonia recognized in his subsection Foliolatae the species P. daurica, P. mlokosewitschii and P. wittmanniana, the latter with four varieties.

P. wittmanniana Steven was renamed to P. steveniana by the Georgian botanist Kemularia-Nathadze in 1961, who recognized all previous taxa except P. abchasica in addition to describing a new species named P. ruprechtiana.

According to the most recent taxonomic review of this complex of taxa, no morphological differences occur that are distinct enough to recognize separate species.

coriifolia occurs at elevations below 1000 m in the west and north-west of the Caucasus and it is found in deciduous forests dominated by oak, beech, elm, maple and ash or in mixed forests of fir, oak and beech, growing on a wide range of limestone, sandstone and volcanic rocks.

mlokosewitschii is only known from eastern Georgia, north-western Azerbaijan and adjacent Russia, where it grows in deciduous oak, beech, elm, maple and chestnut forests.

wittmanniana is found in north-western Georgia and the upper reaches of the Mzymta River in adjacent Russia where it grows in both deciduous forests and subalpine and alpine meadows between 1000 and 2300 m, only on limestone.

[4] With its hairless leaves, P. daurica, does not seem to be adapted to a typical Mediterranean climate, but to rather more humid circumstances in summer.

The population on Mount Orjen grows in forest consisting of silver fir, European beech, Turkish hazel, the maple species Acer pseudoplatanus and A. intermedium, and ash, and is further accompanied by widespread species such as European spindle, mountain cherry, drooping bittercress, Turk's cap lily, but also with endemics such as the Orjen iris.

These are said to be hardy in western Europe and suitable for normal garden conditions, the lowland taxa with preference for more or less shady circumstances.

[9] P. daurica is a red book species (VU) in Ukraine and is cultivated in the Crimean reservations of Yalta, Karadag and Cape Martyan.