Achira, Canna Edulis

[oxbowfarm]

Does anybody know which varieties of commonly available Canna lily are Canna edulis/indica aka Achira? I'd like to mess around with growing it if anyone knows of a decent source (US).

[cletus]

I do not but I see a lot of different Cannas around here in 7a Virginia. Is there an easy way to tell if its an edulis/indica specie? I'm gonna have to cook up some this fall. I wonder if others in the genus are palatable or toxic.

[rowan]

Ornamental cannas are edible and palatable but bit more fibrous.

[raymondo]

I have some Canna edulis but am unsure just what to do with it and when to do it. I had expected the tops to die off with the frost but we've had such a mild autumn there have only been a couple of subzero nights and so far the Canna is fine. Does it produce tubers, or is it rhizomatous, like the more decorative members of the genus?

[oxbowfarm]

I hate the world of ornamental plants, its chock full of hype and deliberately confusing information. There's lots of vendors selling canna lily's but they rarely have a real scientific name attached or give any information other than flower color or other ornamental characteristics.

[steev]

The desire to sell so often trumps the obligation to be truthful/accurate; no less in horticultural matters than in the political/social. It's too bad about us humans, we fall short so often.

[wildedge]

Canna edulis is sometimes sold by seed but will usually come through as a relatively small tubered strain (sometimes called C. "indica"). All species have edible starch that can be extracted out of the roots but the traditionally grown edible strains are propagated vegetatively and produce little viable seed. I doubt you would have much reward growing them in Z7. I am Z9 here and they grow really well. I am starting up a Canna breeding program using the old big tubered variety known as "Queensland Arrowroot" and trying to cross it with various seed producing species I have collected over the years. The aim is to produce a strain that grows from seed but reliably produces useful tubers. This would make planting out a large crop much easier since the seed is faster to plant and easier to store than lots of sideshoots. It also make continuous improvement by mass selection possible.

[blueadzuki]

This sounds a little silly, but, given that canna seed can also be used as a substitute for bird shot, if one was going for an all around ideal survivalist plant, one might also want to select for the roundest seed possible (from what I understand, while indica has very round seed, the hybrids tend to have more ovoid to oblong seed.)

[steev]

Is this where posts about "cannabalism" should be?