Canna 'Uncle Sam'

A tall Italian Group cultivar; green foliage, ovoid shaped, maroon margin, branching habit; triangular stems, coloured green + purple; panicles of flowers are open, red-orange and burnt-red, staminodes are large, edges lightly frilled, petals purple with farina, fully self-cleaning; seed is sterile, pollen is low fertile; rhizomes are thick, up to 3 cm in diameter, coloured white and purple; tillering is prolific.

Introduced by Antoine Wintzer of The Conard & Jones Co., West Grove, PA, USA. Awarded the RHS Award of Merit in 1907 and featured in the 1908 RHS outdoor Canna trials at Wisley, England.
Canna Cyclopedia

Canna 'Uncle Sam'

A tall Italian Group cultivar; green foliage, ovoid shaped, maroon margin, branching habit; triangular stems, coloured green + purple; panicles of flowers are open, red-orange and burnt-red, staminodes are large, edges lightly frilled, petals purple with farina, fully self-cleaning; seed is sterile, pollen is low fertile; rhizomes are thick, up to 3 cm in diameter, coloured white and purple; tillering is prolific.

Introduced by Antoine Wintzer of The Conard & Jones Co., West Grove, PA, USA. Awarded the RHS Award of Merit in 1907 and featured in the 1908 RHS outdoor Canna trials at Wisley, England.

The lost 6 months - dry rhizomes

Canna 'Uncle Sam', photo by Malcolm McFarland

For Cannas in the rhizome trade it is quite simple. They have the foliage chopped off and the rhizomes are ripped out of the field at first frosts, they go through a high pressure water spraying system that removes most of the soil still clinging to them. They dry for a week or so in a controlled temperature, then they are hand separated and packaged ready for sale.

Up until then everything went just fine for the Cannas, but now the problems start. The packaged rhizomes enter the distribution chain, and they spend their time in warehouses and despatch points in temperatures that are very often uncontrolled. Eventually, in January they arrive at the premises of the final part of the chain, the garden centres. There they go onto sales racks and any weak ones perish there, with no water, and little light. No more to say, except that they stay there slowly dehydrating until May and early June, when they get offered in 2-4-1 deals to cover up their disadvantaged state.

For the survivors, the rhizomes sold through the rhizome trade are normally very dry by the time they are sold to the public, and I feel that they should not be judged at all that first year. The rhizomes are normally very de-hydrated and the root system is normally dried out and useless. All the remaining energy stored in the rhizome has to be used to protect its very life existence and is mainly used to grow a new root system.

If it is planted in soil with little nutritious value, then it is now in a doomed cycle. Growing a new root system means it does not have the energy available to produce large, luxurious foliage or produce large expansive blooms. It will grow some foliage to allow the capture of more energy to keep it alive, and that will probably be sub-standard, showing its state of stress. It may produce minimum flowers in a desperate attempt to produce some seed to ensure its DNA lives on, but nothing that will enlighten the heart of a gardener. So the Canna manages to hang onto life, but the gardener thinks it is a poor variety and doesn't deserve to have space in the garden again.

Gardeners who give up on Cannas at this point have just lost out on one of life's raffles. So many, if nurtured properly through the winter and grown on in good conditions next year will more than make the grade. I believe that many plants thrown out as having virus are just heavily stressed through mistreatment. That doesn't mean that many don't have virus, I am sure that they do, but my guess is that at least 50% are just suffering from this mishandling during the lost 6 months.

Global warming or freezing?

As the world warms and ice-sheets and glaciers begin to melt, most of us worry about how the earth will respond and what kind of impact climate change will have. Will flooding become a regular feature, or is the land going to become parched? Are hurricanes and typhoons going to spring up in places they have never visited before? Is the rising sea level going to swallow some of the world's most fertile farmland, along with millions of homes?

All of these are valid concerns, but now it turns out that the impact of global warming could be worse than we first imagined. Ice sheets are mostly frozen water, but during the freezing process they can also incorporate organisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. Some scientists believe that climate change could unleash ancient illnesses as ice sheets drip away and bacteria and viruses defrost. Illnesses we thought we had eradicated, like polio, could reappear, while common viruses like human influenza could have a devastating effect if melting glaciers release a bygone strain to which we have no resistance. What is more, new species unknown to science may re-emerge. And it is not just humans who are at risk: animals, plants and marine creatures could also suffer as ancient microbes thaw out.

Canna 'Uncle Sam', photo by Malcolm McFarland

And what is so frustrating is that none of us can do anything about it. The whole thing is too big for us. I sometimes wonder if enjoying and growing plants and vegetables every year is just a way of turning a blind eye to the problem, and should I not be thinking about it every waking minute. But that is the road to madness. What else, as individuals, can we do? And then I see something like this brilliant photograph above, and it lifts my spirits. I know that it is right to continue doing what we are doing, until we can't do it any more.

In the meantime, here in Worcester, England, we just finished a freezing period, with temperatures dropping to -10 degrees Centigrade (14 degrees Fahrenheit). However, we normally expect that late December and January will be our coldest periods, and they were relatively mild. The lack of a pattern is the most disconcerting part of what is going on.