Musifolia Group Definition

Canna 'Musaefolia Rubra'

A first-cut at defining what constitutes a Musifolia Group cultivar.

"A cultivar that would also qualify as a member of the Foliage Group, but which has foliage that is truly Banana-like, and not just 'similar' to the Musa family. It must also be similar to the Banana in size and general conformation."

How does that sound as a starting point, and can anybody come up with improvements?

New Musifolia Group

I have been in correspondence with several Canna enthusiasts over C. 'Musifolia'. Those who have read the Canna article on Wikipedia will know that the earliest Canna treatise is the French book of 1867, Le Canna, son histoire, sa culture, published by Libraire Centrale d'Agriculture et de Jardinage, and authored by Eduard Chaté and Sons.

In this book the author described a species, already called C. excelsa in England and Germany, as C. musaefolia. It was given this name by Monsieur Théodore Année, the retired French diplomat who created the world's first Canna cultivars.

In earlier times, each country felt justified in giving species their own native names, as International rules of botanical nomenclature did not exist over 150 years ago. Also, International co-operation was unknown, as most of the major powers were at war with each other quite regularly.

Canna (Musifolia Group) 'Peruviana'

The author also described five hybrids created by breeders of the day, Cannas 'Hybrida', 'Minima', 'Peruviana', 'Perfecta', 'Rubra'. Two of these cultivars were said to follow after the species and did not have rhizomes, but 3 of them 'Hybrida', 'Peruviana' and 'Rubra' took after the seed parents and had normal rhizomes. We are growing those three rhizome-based cultivars.

No modern-day taxonomists recognize the species name C. musaefolia, and treat C. excelsa as a synonym of C. latifolia. And none recognize a Canna species without rhizomes.

Nowadays, in the gardens of Canna enthusiasts we have specimens that we call C. 'Musifolia', but we have no way of ever proving their backgrounds. Are they Hybrida, Peruviana or Rubra? The descriptions of each show distinct differences, and Canna enthusiasts should be able to assign their own cultivars to one of these.

My suggestion is that we create another new cultivar group, called Musifolia Group, and all cultivars that have banana-like foliage should be assigned to that group. My proposition is that we should stop worrying about history that we can never prove one way or the other.

We also have two more recent Musifolia Group specimens, namely C. (Musifolia Group) 'Grande' and C. (Musifolia Group) 'Nigra'. In the new group world, we can stop worrying about their (unprovable) history and just look at their physique. Do they have banana-like foliage? If the answer is yes, then they are members of the Canna Musifolia Group. Otherwise they are members of the Canna Foliage Group.

And so we move on...

Observations would be appreciated.

Canna News: Musaefolia Peruviana, genetic volcano!

Breaking all the rules over the number of bits and pieces a Canna should have!

Wot! no rhizomes?

All botanical descriptions of the Canna genus contain a reference, such as the following one quoted from the Wikipedia,

"The plants are large tropical and subtropical perennial herbs with a rhizomatous rootstock."

Please note the reference to rhizomes. One hundred and fifty years ago, Canna musaefolia was recognised as a Canna species. It was described by Monsieur E. Chaté, the author of the worlds first book devoted to Cannas, in the following manner.

"This species was formerly described in the English, Dutch, and German horticultural journals under the name of C. excelsa. It was named C. musæfolia by Monsieur Théodore Année, who introduced it into France in 1858, from the resemblance of its leaves to those of the Musa or banana-tree. It reaches a height of more than 8 ft. and has green, downy stems, and very large, oval, green leaves. Flowers small, orange-yellow. It is a tender species without rhizomes, and requires to be kept constantly growing. Peru."

The point of the quote being that there were no rhizomes. Canna excelsa (and by implication C. muaefolia) is accepted as a synonym of C. paniculata. However, all known Cannas have rhizomes or tubers. So, you can imagine our surprise when potting up a C. paniculata, started from seed this year, to discover that it was totally without rhizomes. I first thought this was some sort of freak, perhaps caused by the extreme weather we have *enjoyed* this year. The seed came from a reliable source, originating in Peru.

We now hear from Dale McDonnel in her excellent article The effects of drought on Cannas, 19 November 2007 on this blog, that she is also the custodian of such a Canna freak. Dale obtained her specimen from the old Bendigo Canna Collection. It long ago lost its identity and is either another of the very early French hybrids or a species Canna. Dale nicknamed it "The Bendigo Banana" because of its close resemblance to a Musa. It has never flowered for her and cannot be identified until it does. The foliage is a pale, lettuce green, poised on long, arching pedicels. The long leaves, have prominent, close veins, undulate margins and fold downwards. In windy weather these split and look just like Musa foliage. It does not tiller like other cannas. Each leaf stalk arises from an individual small conical knob.

In his book, Le Canna, Monsieur Chaté also described two hybrids that Monsieur Année had raised, based on C. musaefolia. The first was C. 'Musaefolia Minima' , which he described as

"Leaves of a whitish green, badly set. Flowers small, orange brown. No rootstocks. Introduced by Théodore Année, Passy, France, EU in 1860."

The second was C. 'Musaefolia Perfecta', which he described in the following terms

"Stems from 5 ft. to 6½ ft. high. Leaves broad, very firm, of a handsomish whiteish green. Flowers small, yellow. Roots fiberous, without rootstocks. Introduced by Théodore Année, Passy, France, EU in 1862."

It is too early to draw any conclusions, but it would appear that Dale has a specimen which is either the original species, or one of the two hybrids. Until it flowers, we will not know. All three possibilities have different flowers, so it should be possible to put a name to it then. In the meantime we are trying to keep our specimen alive and growing over the winter.

Based on Monsieur Chaté's descriptions we can speculate that what many gardeners call Canna 'Musaefolia' is, in fact, one of the five hybrids raised by Monsieur Année. Two of them are described above and have no rhizomes, so that leaves three known possibilities, C. 'Musaefolia Hybrida', C. 'Musaefolia Peruviana' or C. 'Musaefolia Rubra'. They may, of course, be an example of C. 'Musaefolia Grande', introduced by Herb Kelly from Venezuela in 1989.

Finally, we must not forget that there may have been subsequent cultivars raised in the interim period since Monsieur Chaté authored his classical canna book in 1867, however, all focus was switched to the floriferous Crozy Group from that time onwards. We have been lucky enough to acquire the three separate Musaefolia cultivars with rhizomes, all named. They were not spelled correctly, but hey, after 150 years that is not a big deal.

The Effects of Drought on Cannas

The Canna blooming season has well and truly arrived in the southern hemisphere. At least it has where Cannas are receiving any water. The southern half of Australia is still in the grip of an eleven year drought, the worst in our history and it is only recently that the northern tropical and subtropical climes have started to have their summer rains after several below average rainfall seasons.

Here in the southern half of the country most towns are on severe garden watering restrictions after the winter and spring rains failed completely. Farmers dependent on summer irrigation to milk cows, grow crops and produce fruit, have had their "guaranteed" irrigation water allocations slashed. Normally they have 100% allocation plus another 100% excess water sales. Ensuring an effective buffer against our sweltering, dry summers. Most will only receive 10% allocation, no excess water sales and some areas will have zero allocations apart from stock and domestic supplies which will at least water their livestock. The stock will have to be hand fed very expensive grain and hay in place of lush pastures.

Last summer my Canna collection had to subsist on recycled water from shower and washing machine. We were not allowed to use any clean water outside the house. This spring, restrictions have, at the moment, been eased a little to allow watering of garden beds (no lawns allowed) twice weekly for one hour per day. This can only be done using a hand held hose. In a garden so crammed with plants as mine, this means that each bed is lucky if it receives a splash of water once every two weeks. Although it is the last month of spring, the temperatures are soaring and more like those of mid summer.

How are the cannas faring? Surprisingly they are still alive. Last season the severe lack of water saw them only reaching about 30% of their normal height. Prolonged flowering was much reduced due to lack of increase of the rhizomes.

The foliage this season is showing signs of stress although it was okay last season apart from the leaves being smaller. Foliage on those 100 or so overwintered in the ground at our old property is better than that of those living in luxury in their new environment. These 300 cultivars were moved to our new property and planted in early winter. The first leaves of these are also showing horrible streaked and blotched foliage but the most recent leaves are unfurling fresh and clean. Flowers do not seem to be affected and the first blooms look wonderful. A plentiful water supply was the primary motivation for the move and cannas growing on the new property have received a thorough weekly soaking. They went into stockbeds lavishly enriched with well rotted cow manure. Consequently they are at least two months ahead in development compared with the poor old 100 still languishing in their old home. These later are looking very parched and only just unfurling their first and second leaves, but the streaking and blotching is nowhere near as obvious as those already transferred. The sooner we have them all settled into their new stockbeds with lots of water available and some of the most productive soils in Australia to dine upon, the better. This reinforces my belief that the most optimum time to divide and move cannas is when they are in full growth.

The delay in completing the transfers of the last 100 cultivars before the growing season commenced has, in part, been due to the fact that these particular rhizomes had not been lifted for three years. Consequently a lot of them had "walked" away from their name stakes and cuddled up amidst neighbouring cultivars. Until they showed some leaves, it was very difficult to find who had walked where. Indeed, it was difficult to determine even if a cultivar had survived the cumulative abuse of the past few years until they poked their noses up out of the ground. I grow my cannas in mixed plots with other shrubs, grasses and perennials and was loathe to plow up whole beds looking for them. We still have to put the house up for sale and a backyard of fallow dirt is not a good look. Remaining perennials should soon cover the bare spots where cannas are removed providing we don't completely devastate them. As soon as we have a cool spell these laggards will join the rest of the collection. I can't face lifting and bagging cannas and then replanting in temperature hovering around 38 degrees C. The cannas will not mind the heat, but I will.

The most noticeable effect on the cannas from such draconian treatment is that the amount of rhizomes have dwindled alarmingly. Where once there was a clump one metre in diameter containing a potential forty or fifty divisions, there is now only one or two skinny, undernourished rhizomes left alive. This is not the case for all, but the majority have dwindled. Surprisingly we have only lost two cultivars completely. Apparently unaffected by the drought are 'Pennsylvania' and ancient 'Guttermanii'. No two cannas could be more unalike. C. x 'Pennsylvania' is a big, red Wintzer raised triploid and C x 'Guttermanii' (syn. 'Sparks' in USA) is one of the very early Année French hybrids circa late 1840s.

C. x 'Pennsylvania' (left).

C x 'Guttermanii' (below)

The most devastated canna in the collection was one obtained from the old Bendigo Canna Collection. It long ago lost its identity and is either another of the very early French hybrids or a species Canna. I nicknamed it "The Bendigo Banana" because of its close resemblance to a Musa. It has never flowered for me and cannot be identified until it does. The foliage is a pale, lettuce green, poised on long, arching pedicels. The long leaves, have prominent, close veins, undulate margins and fold downwards. In windy weather these split and look just like Musa foliage. One small clump of this has completely died. The other much larger clump is reduced to just two small knobs of rhizome. Fortunately it is bouncing away in its new home but for a few weeks I thought it was caput. No doubt that this lack of rhizome stamina is due to the peculiar rhizomes the plant produces. It does not tiller like other cannas. Each leaf stalk arises from an individual small conical knob. I believe this to be the only plant left in the world of this cultivar. Supposing of course that it proves to be an early hybrid and not a species. On the right, you can see the peculiar rhizomes.