Tag: canna

From “Awaiting the Last Blaze of Summer” in On Gardening by Henry Mitchell:

“The long hot days… are soon coming to an end. Already the signs of approaching fall may be seen — the first flowers on the wild white almond-scented clematis, a brilliant red leaf here and there on the dogwood, swamp maple, and sourgum trees.

“But early September may yet show us some of the hottest days of the year, all the more wonderful for being the last true burst of summer….

“My enthusiastic admiration today centers on a quite tender canna, C. iridiflora, the iris-flowered canna of Peru. It is said to tolerate far less cold than ordinary garden cannas, which is probably why you never see it in gardens here. A quite small plant with two leaves arrived in late May, and I suspected it would take two or three years to raise it to flowering size. On the contrary, it has grown to shoulder height and is now flowering.

“An established plant reaches ten feet or so, with leaves three feet long and a foot wide. Flowers are borne on curving drooping stems at the top, and the rich coral-rose flowers, smaller than those of garden cannas, hang down. They resemble individual florets of a gladiolus, except for seeming to hang upside down.

“Three friends from England saw the plant and were only routinely polite. No fits. I have often thought the most intense pleasures of a garden are reserved for rather odd people.”

From “The Men in the Family” by Jack Ridl in Southern Poetry Review, edited by Robert Grey:

Quietly, next to the old toy drum, my grandfather
tired from rehearsing his bitter life in the mill,
sits and draws stick figures, then staples them
to the edges of the window where he watched
himself walk away two weeks after his 46th year
on the line. His son learned basketball and that took him
into a new language, one that took him
farther from home than any work. In my
grandfather’s yard, the tea roses, the necklaces
of allysum, the cornflower, and the canna lilies wait
in the sun, well-weeded….

And in another time, a ruddy
young Bohemian, a rose in his lapel, cursed his team of horses
as they pulled him and his wagon of beer barrels
across the brick streets of Mt. Pleasant,
Irwin, Wilkinsburg, Aspinwall, and Pittsburgh….

I am the last son. I write this.

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Howdy!

This is the second of two posts featuring Canna Lilies from my garden, photos of three plants I bought in the spring called “Cannova Yellow.”

As I mentioned in the previous post — Canna Lily ‘Cannova Yellow’ (1 of 2) — these Cannas had two distinct blooming cycles, one in May and one in June, betwixt which flowers from the first batch disappeared but were then replaced by fresh ones in slightly smaller forms. Still they maintained the same “canna style” for which the plant’s flowers are well-known, and, perhaps, produced even more swatches of orange throughout their yellow petals than the first batch.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Over the Horizon” in The Origin of Plants by Maggie-Campbell Culver:

“Rather like the African Marigold, which was seen growing wild along the coast of north Africa, so Indian Shot eventually naturalised itself in Spain and Portugal. This was found to be Canna indica and was an early introduction from the West Indies towards the end of the 1560s. It may have attracted attention when Spain was earlier castanetting itself through Central America between 1511 and about 1530. The genus has about 50 species in the family of Cannaceae and is spread over tropical South and Central America and also Asia….

“When it was introduced into Britain it was considered a great rarity and it was some time before anyone understood how to cultivate it. The plant feels most comfortable growing on forest margins in moist open forest areas, but seems to be domestically quite adaptable. The word Canna comes from the Greek for ‘reed’, and indica is because of its connection with the West Indies. All the species, and now the hybrids, carry the most spectacularly coloured flowers and give a zing to any garden….

“A number of the Canna species were introduced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but they were always considered specialist plants, until the idea was developed in France of using subtropical and tropical plants for summer splendour. This was pounced upon by gardeners in Britain and is a style of summer bedding still used in much municipal planting today. A mass of them blooming together looks rather like a flock of exotic parrots, and their exuberance at least cheers up what may be an otherwise dull summer.”

From “Houston Heights” by Janet Lowery in Texas in Poetry 2, edited by Billy Bob Hill:

I have decided not to forget these little houses,
these tiny cottages, these small frames of brick
and clapboard and stone, these roofs of silvery
shingle and green tile. I have decided not to forget
the pastel colors of the jaunty homes: mauve
and peach, sage and lavender, pale pink
and bleached periwinkle blue. Nor the smooth
scallops of gingerbread peaks, the fresh white
trim of picket fences, nor the spiked tips
of black iron gates, the neatly groomed lawns
and beds of bright flowers: pink candy impatiens
and frothy azaleas, velvet-mouthed pansies, lace
periwinkle, crepe canna lilies, the ragged lips
of scarlet hibiscus, pots of pink begonias, pots
of marigolds, pots of geraniums and portulaca….

I have decided not to forget these tiny side streets
tunneling toward the tracks, the wide boulevards,
the neat avenues and cracked sidewalks. Here,
on the notebook page, I will remember everything….

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Hello!

This is the first of two posts featuring Canna Lilies from my garden, photos of three giant-leafed beauties called “Cannova Yellow.” These Cannas are in large pots in my courtyard, where they’re happy to be the center of attention and get just the right amount of sunlight and shade. I usually swap them out for new varieties each year, though I did recently learn that you can dig them up, store them indoors, and repot them after winter’s end. Here in the Southeast, those in the ground tend to return on their own; but those in pots — like mine — often get frozen out, so maybe I’ll try this over-wintering trick just to see what happens.

I went looking for Cannas with red or orange flowers early in the spring, but came across these yellow ones, whose colors I really liked. They bloomed in two distinct cycles — one around the middle of May and one around the middle of June — each bloom lasting a couple of weeks. July’s growth seemed to hint at a third set of blooms; but as is often the case with Cannas, what looked like emerging flower shoots turned out to be new leaves. Leaves are cool though too!

This post shows the blooms from May, and the photos progress from first buds through larger blossoms, followed by tall columns of overlapping flowers at the end. I especially like the swatches of orange you can see on some of the biggest flower petals, that look like someone took a brush and dabbed them with orange paint to create some alternating color and texture.

The Canna’s flower structure tends to be very complex, usually asymmetrical — and that combined with their large size can make them challenging to photograph well. These yellows, though, seemed to present more compact, balanced proportions than varieties I’ve previously owned. See, for example, my post from last year — Canna Lily ‘Cannova Orange Shades’ — which shows how even at the earliest blooming state, those Orange Shades were more asymmetrical than these, with large flowers popping at the end of longer stems, stems that then curved and randomly folded away from the flower’s center as they aged. The individual petals on these yellow ones remained mostly upright, by contrast, until they lost their grips and flew away.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Canna” in Bulbs and Tuberous-Rooted Plants: Their History, Description, Methods of Propagation and Complete Directions for their Successful Culture in the Garden, Dwelling and Greenhouse (1893) by C. L. Allen:

“Although the Canna is not a bulb, it is always associated with bulbs. It would seem out of place anywhere else, and a list of bulbs would appear incomplete without it, as would any collection of ornamental plants. But few plants are better known than the Cannas, and few less appreciated. Because of [their] free-growing habit, thriving under almost any circumstances, they are generally grown without care and in a manner that does not, in any degree, develop their beauty or usefulness….

“Although a swamp plant, it will thrive most luxuriantly in dry soil, if made rich. For large groups on the lawn, for planting against fences or unsightly places it has no equal in the list of ornamental plants. One of its great attractions is that it will grow anywhere, and always ornament its surroundings….

“Whether in clumps or in rows, the plants will completely cover the ground, forming an impenetrable screen when planted at that distance apart.”

From Understanding Color in Photography by Bryan Peterson and Susana Heide Schellenberg:

“Years ago, Kodak was fond of telling photographers to ‘put a little bit of red in your compositions and the world will notice.’ This is because red is the most advancing color. It immediately comes forward to grab the viewer’s attention, no matter where it is in the composition. In fact, all warm colors — not only red, but also orange and yellow — advance. Cooler colors, such as blue and green, recede, falling into the background. By combining advancing and receding colors, you can make your subject pop and add depth to your image.”

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Hello!

The official name of the plant in these photos is: Cannova Bronze Scarlet Canna Lily. The hardiness quote above — from a book published in 1893 — is certainly appropriate, and I’ve grown a couple of different canna varieties in large pots in my courtyard. They’ve done quite well that way, and, possibly, will get a new location in the ground next spring where they can spread superiously without any potted constraints. They don’t seem to care too much whether they have a lot of sun or a little, and I’ve even grown them in my pond — where they’ll come back for several years (though the pond gets only limited filtered sunlight), as long as we don’t have a hard freeze (and maybe even if we do).

Canna flowers have always seemed odd to me — not unattractive but with a somewhat alien looking structure. Only about half of the flower petals ever fully open, and, unlike, say, irises, I don’t find interesting things to photograph from different camera angles. They all look alike to me, regardless of how I approach them, so I don’t photograph them that often. The leaves captivate me more; and as you can see in the second trio of photos below, they open with a distinct uncurling effect, growing rapidly in the first few days while showing off stripes of red, orange, yellow, and green. The leaves seem to glow — especially in morning light — and I suspect they may have evolved that extra luminosity to attract pollinators.

I took the first three photographs early in the day, and the last four in late afternoon — then studied how their red color (which is pretty intense) varied between the first and last. The color red can be a challenge to photograph and process “correctly” (search for Why is red hard to photograph? if the subject interests you), but I noticed right off the bat that the morning photos seemed cooler in color than those taken in the afternoon; and, indeed, Lightroom shows much more yellow (or orange as a blend of yellow and red) in the histogram and color panels for the last four. I don’t think this necessarily means that morning light produced cooler colors than afternoon light (one of the many color photography questions for which you can find the exact opposite answer from different websites (see Is morning or afternoon light warmer?)) — but more likely occurred for other reasons. You see, my canna lilies are in front of a patio table with a large umbrella over it, and in the morning there’s more shade on the cannas than in the afternoon — because the sun rises over the back of the umbrella but sets toward the front, allowing more sunlight to ray on the plants as the day progresses. So, short version, in the afternoon there’s more white/yellow light on the plants, which desaturates the red and highlights the orange, since orange is often within the color ranges of anything our eyes dub as “red.”

That’s all pretty nerdy, I suppose, but it can be fun to try and sort out why colors appear the way they do — especially when dealing with natural subjects where color emerges at the molecular level, but our eyes tend to ignore distinctions and focus on dominant shades. If I asked you “what color are these flowers?” — you wouldn’t say that they’re red with a bit of orange and some flashes of yellow and maybe even some blue… you would simply say: “They’re red!”

I recently learned color production in plants is called biological pigment, and their pigments are segregated into different categories based on the colors those plants produce (see What Makes Flowers So Colorful for an excellent overview). Red, as it turns out, produces highly reflective wavelengths, which in part accounts for how excessively saturated it often appears to our eyes and our cameras.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

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