History of Canna Species

The plate in Leonhart Fuchs’s unpublished book ‘The Vienna Codex’ (compiled between 1536 and 1566) representing Canna indica may well be the first illustration of the genus in botanical literature. The plate is annotated as ‘Gladiolus indicus or Indischer Schwertel’, and numbered ‘Cod. 11122, p. 321’. This plate has been…

In 1576 De Lobel described and illustrated a plant cultivated in Belgium as ‘Indica florida’, the seeds of which he had received from friends from the West Indies (‘Indiae Occiduae’). According to him the species was very rare, but already in cultivation in France, England, Italy, and Portugal. He did…

Clusius writes in his famous herbal of 1601 that a plant named ‘Canna indica or Flos Cancri’ (because the closed flowers resemble the claw of a lobster) had already been cultivated for a long time in cloister gardens in Portugal where it may well have arrived with the early discoverers…

In 1648 a book on medicinal plants of Brazil was published by Willem Piso, physician of the Dutch settlement in Recife (Brazil), then Dutch property and governed by Johan Maurits van Nassau. He provided the first description and illustration of both the wild Canna indica (as ‘Meeru, sive Canna Indica’)…

In 1671 Bauhin published the second editions of both his ‘Prodromus Theatri Botanici’ and ‘Pinax’. In these books Canna is still placed in one group with Arundo inodora (Phragmites), Arundo odorata (Calamus), and Arundo indica (comprising bamboo, sugar cane, and Canna).

Between 1678 and 1693 Van Rheede tot Draakestein published ‘Hortus Indicus Malabaricus’, a book on the medicinal plants of a Dutch colony in SE India. As was customary in this period, people were much interested in local medicines to help keeping the inhabitants of the new colony healthy, and especially…

Rumphius treating Canna in the fifth volume of his Herbarium Amboinense (1747: 177) recalls encountering rosaries made of the seeds of Canna found in the possession of an Arabian (?) prisoner taken into custody at Ambon (Indonesia) in 1685.

In 1700 De Tournefort gives the first detailed illustration of the floral parts of a flower and fruit of Canna (as Cannacorus or ‘Balisier’), mentioning 6 species. He illustrates 3 sepals and 1 petal which is divided into 6 lobes: 1 of these lobes bears both anther and stigma.

In 1732 Dillenius made a list of the plants cultivated in ‘Hortus Elthamensis’, the garden of J. Sherard in Eltham (now in Southeast London) in England, in which he described and illustrated Canna flaccida, originating from South Carolina, USA. He did not realize his ‘Cannacorus glaucophyllos, ampliore flore, iridis palustris…

In 1737 Linnaeus published ‘Hortus Cliffortianus’, a list of the plants cultivated in the garden of G. Clifford in the Netherlands, and ‘Viridiarum Cliffortianum’, an abbreviated version of the former book. He noticed 2 ‘kinds’ of plants from this garden: 1. Canna spathulis bifloris (= Canna indica) originating from the…

Following the international rules of botanical nomenclature, the official taxonomy of Cannaceae starts in 1753 when Linnaeus published ‘Species Plantarum’. In this book Linnaeus arranged the plants according to his new binominal system.

One year later, in 1754, Miller still uses the generic name Cannacorus in the abbreviated 4th edition of his Gardeners Dictionary. The genus comprises 6 species, described by more than 2 Latin words, the first being ‘C. latifolius vulgaris. Tourn.’ (= Canna indica). In the 8th edition of ‘The Gardeners…

In 1789 the first list of plants cultivated in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, ‘Hortus kewensis’, was compiled by W. Aiton. It comprises C. glauca and C. indica. Aiton recognizes 4 varieties of C. indica based on flower colour, flower parts being erect or reflexed, and shape of the…

The third species of Canna, C. flaccida, has been described and illustrated by Salisbury in 1791 from a plant originally collected by J. Bartram in South Carolina, USA, and at the time generally cultivated in gardens in England (cf. typification of C. glauca).

In their ‘Flora Peruviana’ of 1798 Ruiz & Pavón listed 3 species of Canna. Apart from C. indica they described 2 new species: C. paniculata and C. iridiflora, both based on Peruvian material.