THE MAIN GATE ROAD 
HE Main Gate Road has, reversed, the curves of an S. Starting from the gate, which gives to it its name, it 
reaches and skirts the Lake, and thence climbs the Bandstand Hill. In its first part, where it is 
between Lawns A and B (see the map), it is bordered by large rectangular beds for which Gannas 
have been found appropriate. In its second part it has many economic trees near to it ; and in its 
last part it is among palms. 
The Garden Ganna of to*day is very much hybridised, and its history is interesting. Seventy years ago the Gannas in cultivation 
were races of C. discolor, the shortest 6 ft. high and the tallest even up to 12 ft., their flowers small, but compensated by the prettiness of 
their bronzed foliage. Dwarfing was obtained in 1862 by the sporting of a plant in Paris, which, out of a bed of tall plants, grew to no 
more than 4-5 feet. This plant a French botanist preserved, and having, in the next year, crossed the Peruvian C. iridiflora (6-8 ft. high) 
with the Brazilian C. Warszewiczii 
(3 ft. high), he intercrossed the 
results with his dwarf mutant, 
creating in this way the first 
“ French Gannas.” Subsequently 
an Italian horticulturist took 
C, iridiflora again, and crossed it, 
not with either of the species 
incorporated into the first French 
Gannas, but with the full-flowered 
Florida C. flaccida, which is 
itself under 3 ft. in height. This 
cross gave the " Italian Ganna.” 
Professor L. H. Bailey has put 
forward the name Canna generalis 
for the French Canna, and the 
name C. orchiodes for the Italian 
Canna ; but both are crossed into 
each other now to such an extent 
that there is no line of separation 
left, by the use of which the two 
names can be applied. 
Behind the Canna beds 
on Lawn A stand two clumps 
of the Sago Palm, Metroxylon 
Sagas. The trunks arise as 
sucker shoots from an under- 
THE MAIN GATE, 
[Photo by G. A. Best. 
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