Its vernacular name in China is 美丽芍药 (mei li shao yao) meaning "beautiful peony".

Paeonia mairei is a perennial herbaceous plant of up to 1 m high, that dies down in the autumn, and overwinters with buds just under the surface of the soil.

The seven to nine, inverted egg-shaped, pink to Spanish carmine petals are 3+1⁄2—7 × 2—4+1⁄2 cm, with a usually rounded tip.

In the most recent revision of the genus, it is assigned to the subsection Foliatae with P. algeriensis, P. broteri, P. cambessedesii, P. clusii, P. coriacea, P. corsica, P. daurica, P. kesrouanensis, P. mascula and P.

Paeonia banatica is the tetraploid hybrid of P. mairei and either P. arietina, P. humilis, P. officinalis, P. parnassica or less likely P. tenuifolia, or one of their (now extinct) common ancestors.

[3] Paeonia mairei was named in honor of the French missionary Père Edouard-Ernest Maire who discovered the plant for western science in 1913 in northeastern Yunnan.