DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF FLOWERS. 151 
braces about one hundred species. Several, which were 
formerly included in it, have been removed to other gene- 
ra. See Specularia and Platycodon. 
CANNA.—SxHor Prant. 
[From a Celtic word, signifying a cane or reed.) 
The Cannas are mostly tropical plants, from four to 
eight feet high, with elegant foliage. 
Canna pAtens, Indica, and coccinnea, are found wild 
within the tropics on all the continents, and chiefly in 
moist woods, or spongy, woody wastes. In Brazil and 
other parts of America, they are known by the name of 
Wild Plantain, and their leaves are used as envelopes for 
many objects of commerce. In Spain and Portugal, the 
inhabitants use the seed for making their rosaries; in the 
East Indies, the seeds are sometimes used as shot. The 
seeds of most of the species are round, hard, black, shin- 
ing, heavy, and about one-eighth of an inch in diameter. 
Canna Indica, — Indian Shot. — This is the most 
common species, and succeeds well as an annual if the 
plants are started in a hot-bed. If the seeds are planted 
in pots, and plunged in the bed when it has its greatest 
heat, the plants will soon appear; and, if turned into the 
ground in June, will make large plants, which will flower 
in July and August. In the green-house, it isa perennial, 
and may be propagated by dividing the roots. 
This is desirable, not only for the beauty of its spikes 
of scarlet flowers, but also for-its elegant foliage. The 
leaves are of a rich deep green, three feet long and four 
-to six inches wide; very handsome as they unfold them- 
selves; the flower-stem rises five or six feet high. 
I have cultivated twelve or thirteen of the different 
species, all of them characterized by long, broad, and 
