The hard black seeds of the cannas were used to make rosaries. In 1848, a French gardener, M. Ann e, crossed two wild species and began the development of the canna as we know it in today s garden. By the end of the 1800s, Italian gardeners had introduced the orchid-flowered cannas and the development was complete. Today, there are hundreds of selections of cannas in the garden trade. Leaves may be green, bronze or variegated.
Flowers come in shades of yellow, pink, red and orange.
Cannas are propagated by division of their large branched rhizomes, but they can be grown from seed. The usefulness of the canna in today s garden is primarily from its bold, coarse textured foliage. It harmonizes well with other tall plants and can be mixed in perennial borders or with plantings of trees and shrubs. Fortunately, we are not seeing it used as a centerpiece for circular beds in the middle of lawn spaces as was the fashion a hundred years ago. Cannas are considered root hardy only through Zone 8, but we gardeners are always pushing that limit.