Missed the solstice!

The winter solstice occurs at the instant when the Sun's position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observer. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the event of the winter solstice occurs some time between December 20 and December 23 each year in the northern hemisphere, and between June 20 and June 23 in the southern hemisphere, during either the shortest day or the longest night of the year.

Anyway, I took my eye away for a moment and I missed the solstice. Those who read this blog regularly will know that I am always keen to know when the shortest day has arrived, so that I can start looking forward to Spring and Summer once again. It's all mental mind-play to save the winter blues taking over.

Although I missed it, it has definitely arrived and our days will now start getting longer! Yippee!

I have today finished moving all the cleaned and cut for-sale rhizomes into "flat" trays filled with peat compost, and moved them all into a shed with frost protection. This also makes me feel contented that the worst of the winter work is over and now we can relax a little until the time arrives in about two weeks time to start planting seeds!

Unfortunately, last winter we had two electricity cuts, which destroyed that year's crop! This year we have installed paraffin heaters to provide the main heating, supplemented by the fan heaters with frost controls. There are 105 trays for sale this year, but some only have a handful of rhizomes available, whilst the more vigorous, like Canna 'Musifolia Grande', have hundreds of rhizomes for resale.

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.