Canna (plant) Totally Explained

Everything about Canna Plant totally explained

Canna (or Canna lily, although not a true lily) is a genus of approximately twenty species of flowering plants.
Although a plant of the tropics, most cultivars have been developed in temperate climates and are easy to grow in most countries of the world as long as they can enjoy about 6 hours average sunlight during the summer. See the Canna cultivar gallery for photographs of Canna cultivars.
The name Canna originates from the Celtic word for a cane or reed.

Botany

The plants are large tropical and subtropical perennial herbs with a rhizomatous rootstock. The broad, flat, alternate leaves, that are such a feature of this plant, grow out of a stem in a long narrow roll and then unfurl. The leaves are typically solid green but some cultivars have glaucose, brownish, maroon, or even variegated leaves.

Range

The genus is native to tropical and subtropical regions of the New World, from the southern United States (southern South Carolina west to southern Texas) and south to northern Argentina. English speakers still call them the West Indies.
Much later, in 1658, Pison made reference to another species which he documented under the vulgar or common name of 'Albara' and 'Pacivira', which resided, he said, in the shaded and damp places, between the tropics; this species is Canna angustifolia L., (later reclassified as C. glauca L. by taxonomists). were he argues that "Cannas were unknown to the ancients, and that it's only after the discovery of the New World, that they made their appearance in Europe; Since Canna have very hard and durable seed coverings,

Some species and many cultivars are widely grown in the garden in temperate and sub-tropical regions. Sometimes, they're also grown as potted plants. A large number of ornamental cultivars have been developed. They can be used in herbaceous borders, tropical plantings, and as a patio or decking plant.

Internationally, cannas are one of the most popular garden plants and a large horticultural industry depends on the plant.

The canna rhizome is rich in starch, and it has many uses in agriculture. All of the plant has commercial value, rhizomes for starch (consumption by humans and livestock), stems and foliage for animal fodder, young shoots as a vegetable and young seeds as an addition to tortillas.

The seeds are used as the mobile elements of the kayamb, a musical instrument from Réunion, as well as the hosho, a gourd rattle from Zimbabwe, where the seeds are known as "hota" seeds.

In remoter regions of India, cannas are fermented to produce alcohol.

The plant yields a fibre - from the stem - it's used as a jute substitute.

A fibre obtained from the leaves is used for making paper. The leaves are harvested in late summer after the plant has flowered, they're scraped to remove the outer skin and are then soaked in water for 2 hours prior to cooking. The fibres are cooked for 24 hours with lye and then beaten in a blender. They make a light tan brown paper.

Classification of Cannas

Species

Wild Canna species are the Cannas unaffected by mankind. There are approximately 20 known species, and in the last three decades of the 20th century, Canna species have been categorised by two different taxonomists, Paul Maas, from the Netherlands and Nobuyuki Tanaka from Japan. Both reduced the number of species from the 50-100 that had been accepted previously, and assigned most to being synonyms.
The reduction in numbers is also confirmed by work done by Kress and Prince at the Smithsonian Institution, however, this only covers a subset of the species range.
See List of Canna species for full species information and descriptions.

Horticultural Cannas

See the List of Canna cultivars for photographs of Canna cultivars.
   Cannas became very popular in Victorian times as a garden plant and were grown widely in France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the USA.
   See List of Canna hybridists for details of the people and firms that created the current Canna legacy we all enjoy.
   In the early 1900's, Professor Liberty Hyde Bailey defined, in detail, two garden species (C. x generalis and C. x orchiodes) to categorise the floriferous Cannas being grown at that time, namely the Crozy hybrids and the ‘orchid-like’ hybrids introduced by Carl Ludwig Sprenger in Italy and Luther Burbank in the USA, at about the same time (1894). The definition was based on the genotype, rather than the phenotype, of the two cultivar groups. Inevitably, over time those two floriferous groups were interbred, the distinctions became blurred and overlapped, and the Bailey species names became redundant. Pseudo-species names are now deprecated by the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants which, instead, provides Cultivar Groups for categorising cultivars (see groups at List of Canna cultivars).

Agricultural Cannas

The Canna Agriculture Group contains all of the varieties of Canna grown in agriculture. Canna achira is a generic term used in South America to describe the cannas that have been selectively bred for agricultural purposes, normally derived from C. discolor. It is grown especially for its edible rootstock from which starch is obtained, but the leaves and young seed are also edible, and achira was once a staple foodcrop in Peru and Ecuador.

Cultivation

Cannas grow best in full sun with moderate water in well-drained rich or sandy soil. Cannas grow from perennial rhizomes but are frequently grown as annuals in temperate zones for an exotic or tropical look in the garden.

Disease

Canna are remarkably free of disease, compared to many genus. However, they may fall victim to canna rust, a fungus resulting in orange spots on the plant's leaves, caused by over moist soil. Cannas are also susceptible to certain plant viruses, some of which are Canna specific viruses, which may result in spotted or streaked leaves, in a mild form, but can finally result in stunted growth and twisted and distorted blooms and foliage. The flowers are sometimes affected by a grey, fuzzy mould called Botrytis. Under humid conditions it's often found growing on the older flowers. Treatment is to simply remove the old flowers, so the mould doesn't spread to the new flowers.

Propagation of Canna

Sexual propagation

Seeds are produced from sexual reproduction, involving the transfer of pollen from the stamen of the pollen parent onto the stigma of the seed parent. In the case of Canna, the same plant can usually play the roles of both pollen and seed parents, technically referred to as a hermaphrodite. However, the cultivars of the Italian Group and triploids are almost always seed sterile, and their pollen has a low fertility level. Mutations are almost always totally sterile.

Pollination The species are capable of self-pollination, but most cultivars require an outside pollinator. All cannas produce nectar and therefore attract nectar consuming insects, bats and hummingbirds that act as the transfer agent, spreading pollen between stamens and stigmas, on the same or different inflorescence.

Genetic changes Since genetic recombination has occurred a cultivar grown from seed will have different characteristics to its parent(s) and thus should never be given a parent’s name. The wild species have evolved in the absence of other Canna genes and are deemed to be ‘true to type’ when the parents are of the same species. In the latter case there's still a degree of variance, producing various varieties or minor forms (forma). In particular, the species C. indica is an aggregate species, having many different and extreme varieties and forma ranging from the giant to miniature, from large foliage to small foliage, both green and dark foliage and many different coloured blooms, red, orange, pink, and yellow and combinations of those colours.

Asexual propagation

Division of plant parts Outside of a laboratory, the only asexual propagation method that's effective is rhizome division. This is done by using material from a single parent, and as there's no exchange of genetic material such vegetative propagation methods almost always produce plants that are identical to the parent. After a summer’s growth the horticultural Canna can be separated into typically four or five separate smaller rhizomes, each with a growing nodal point (‘growing eye’). Without the growing point, which is composed of meristem material, the rhizome won't grow.

Micropropagation Micropropagation, or tissue culture as it's also known, is the practice of rapidly multiplying stock plant material to produce a large number of progeny plants. Micropropagation using in vitro (in glass) methods that produce plants by taking small sections of plants and moving them into a sterile environment were they first produce proliferations that are then separated from each other and then rooted or allowed to grow new stem tissue. The process of plant growth is regulated by different ratios of plant growth regulators or PGRs, that promote cell growth. Many commercial organizations have attempted to produce Canna this way, and specifically the “Island Series” of Cannas was introduced by means of mass produced plants using this technique. However, Cannas have a reputation of being difficult micropropagation specimens. Note Micropropagation techniques can be employed on specimens infected with Canna virus and used to dis-infest plants of the virus, it's possible to use a growing shoot tip as the explant, the growing tip is induced into rapid growth, which results in rapid cell division that hasn't had time to be infected with the virus. The rapidly growing region of meristem cells producing the shoot tip is cut off and placed in vitro, with a very high probability of being uncontaminated by virus, since it hasn't yet had contact with the sap of the plant which moves the virus within the plant. In this way, healthy stock can be reclaimed from virus contaminated plants.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Canna Plant'.

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