CANNAS PAST AND Pl^ESBNT 
213 
CANNAS PAST AND PRESENT. 
At this moment there is probably no 
spot more brilliant in Europe than Hy- 
eres-les-Palmiers, that quaintlittle town 
of southern France. I once chanced to 
visit Hyeres in midsummer, when its 
Cannas and Oleanders are in their glory, 
and the feast of colour took one's breath 
away. Oleanders everywhere, pink and 
crimson and white, yellow and copper- 
coloured, toppling over with their own 
extravagance. Unruly ones tumbling 
over walls ; dignified ones standing at- 
tention in the public squares ; homely 
ones sedate and proper in the villa gar- 
dens. Oleanders of which I had never 
dreamed, in every garden, beside every 
stream, even to the wild vallons of the 
hillside. And where there were no Ole- 
anders there were Cannas, in ranks and 
battalions, Cannas dark and Cannas 
green, Cannas crimson and scarlet, 
orange and yellow ; Cannas of Crozy 
and Cannas of Deleuil and a dozen lesser 
growers ; Cannas by the tens of thou- 
sand everywhere. Asa town decked for 
some great festal Hyeres was decked with 
these colours, reinforced now by a gor- 
geous Poinciana, a Jacaranda in all its 
glory, or a house-front swathed to the 
tiles with the orange clusters oiPyrostegia 
igfiea. Never shall I forget that day ; and 
yet before it passed one wearied of the 
glory and came to loath the scarlet and 
the crimson, the orange and the yellow. 
For in the south the Canna is at its best 
and its worst. The depth of colour, the 
profusion, the luxuriance, is unequalled 
with us, but there is an utter lack of that 
restful turf, the subdued lights and soft- 
ened greens, which alone make such a 
Early Cannas. 
glow acceptable. For some inscrutable 
reason one sees the Canna only in that 
intolerable massif to which our neigh- 
bours are so prone, and a bed of two thou- 
sand Cannas undiluted is — at least to 
northern ideas — somewhat overpower- 
ing. There are times when such magni- 
ficence is notoppressive,and places such 
as the famous ^^Tete d'or'' where, tem- 
pered by the surroundings, one can revel 
in the rich display ; but to be shut up 
in a little square or public garden with 
its spread of Cannas in full beauty, gar- 
nished with Alternantheras equally as- 
sertive, moves one to get away a score 
of miles, hoping in one's haste never 
to see another Canna. But this is not 
the fault of the Canna — it is merely its 
abuse. 
The Canna is hundreds of 
years old in the gardens of 
Europe, the first forms having come to 
Spain and Portugal in the days of the 
adventurers, who used the hard round 
seeds as praying-beads. They reached 
us early, for Gerard (in the last days of 
the sixteenth century) tells ofhis Cannas, 
and Parkinson of the "brave flowers," 
which he tended with care. Miller's 
plant dictionary of 1733 describes some 
half a dozen kinds under the early name 
of Cannacorus or Indian Reed, and some 
sixty years later Alton again refers to 
these kinds as under cultivation, but 
whether outdoors or under glass is now 
uncertain. That other kinds gradually 
found their way into our gardens is shown 
by the record of the Bota?iicaI Magazine 
where a good many species are figured 
between 1799 and 1855, but Britain 
has always followed rather than led with 
