266 Plant-Breeding 



grown for their foliage effects. How has this transforma- 

 tion come about? 



In the first place, it should be said that there are many 

 species of canna, and about a half-dozen of these were 

 well known to gardeners at the opening of last century. 

 About 1830, the cannas began to attract much attention 

 from cultivators, and the original species were soon 

 variously hybridized. Crossed seeds, and seeds from 

 the successive generations of hybrids, introduced a host 

 of new and variable forms. The first distinct fashion in 

 cannas seems to have been tall late-flowering forms. 

 In 1848, Annee, a cultivator in France, sowed seeds of 

 Canna nepalensis, a tall oriental species, and there sprung 

 up a race of plants which has since been known as Canna 

 Anncei. It is probable that this Canna nepalensis had 

 become fertilized with other species growing in AnneVs 

 collection, very likely with Canna glauca. At all events, 

 this race of cannas became popular, and was to its time 

 what the French dwarfs are to the present day. The 

 plants were freely introduced into parks, beginning about 

 1856, but their use began to decline by 1870 or before. 

 Descendants of this type, variously crossed and modified, 

 are now frequently seen in parks and gardens. 



The beginning of the modern race of dwarf large- 

 flowered cannas was in 1863, when one of the smaller- 

 flowered Costa Rican species (Canna Warscewiczii) was 

 crossed upon a larger-flowered Peruvian species (Canna 

 iridi flora). The offspring of this union came to be called 

 Canna Ehemannii. This hybrid has been again variously 

 crossed with other species, and modified by cultivation 

 and selection, until the present composite type is the re- 



