Monday 15 December 2008

Revisiting Canna 'Picasso'


A medium sized Crozy Group cultivar; green foliage, oval shaped, white margin, spreading habit; spikes of flowers are open, yellow heavily spotted with red, staminodes are large, edges lightly frilled, fully self-cleaning; fertile both ways, not self-pollinating or true to type, capsules globose; rhizomes are thick, up to 3 cm in diameter, coloured white and purple; tillering is average.

Awards: AGM after trial at RHS Wisley 2002 , entered by Hart Cannas. Yellow with red spots, but not what everybody calls ‘Picasso’. In addition, there is no clear history for this cultivar, as we do not know either when it was introduced or who introduced it. Maybe it is just a synonym for the oldie C. 'Gladiator', which vanished out of circulation about the time that C. 'Picasso' began to appear in catalogues. I have no evidence for such an assertion, but it is an interesting theory.

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