The weather was major news here again. After the only snow for most regions here since 1976, and the most flooding since 1982, torrential rain and more flooding was predicted for yesterday. Fortunately, the rain was not torrential enough to cause flooding. Prior to the rain, I was trying to plant what needed planting so that it would get soaked in well. I split and planted some overgrown Kaffir lily, and split and canned way too many canna. Flowering quince and queen’s tears provide a bit of floral color for this ‘Six on Saturday’.

1. Zayante Creek flowed under the deck to the right of this picture as 2022 became 2023. This was Thursday, a few hours before another flood was predicted, but did not happen.

2. Chaenomeles speciosa ‘Double Take Orange’, flowering quince, like many early spring and late winter flowers, got delayed by the very unusually cool and rainy wintry weather.

3. Chaenomeles speciosa ‘Double Take Orange’, flowering quince is a modern cultivar of a traditional flower. I am none too keen on modern cultivars, but I am fond of tradition.

4. Billbergia nutans, queen’s tears is an unimpressively palid and grassy bromeliad that blooms with these sillily pendulous flowers. Actually though, these silly flowers are cool.

5. Clivia miniata, Kaffir lily was recycled from another landscape, rather than Craigslist. It was crowded within a planter box, so now has more room to grow and be happy here.

6. Canna of various cultivars has become excessive! There are eighty-eight #5 cans of it! At least a dozen more are expected later! Most cans contain enough rhizomes for at least two cans; merely because there were not enough empty cans when I split and canned the dormant rhizomes. I should field grow them somewhere else. At least they will be pretty for this summer.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

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42 thoughts on “Six on Saturday: Canna From Heaven”

    1. Rhody is lounging about inside by the fire while I work out in the rain. The Canna will likely go to good homes, but not here. Only a few live here, since they are not compatible with the style of our landscapes. I want to field grow more in the future, but the parcel where they will grow is not yet ready for them, and will not be for quite a while. Billbergia is cool, . . . but not something I want to grow much more of. At home, I grew it in tree stumps because it accelerated the decay of stumps.

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  2. It looks wet there! We were supposed to have rain all day yesterday, and it only misted from time to time though it remained overcast and threatened rain all day. It is good to hear that your area didn’t flood, and I hope you all make it through the weekend OK. We needed the rain, so I’m hoping to still get some tomorrow. The C. ‘Orange Storm’ is really lovely- a very unusual and attractive shade of ‘orange.’ Thank you for including those photos. At least these modern versions aren’t thorny and hold up incredibly well over a long season. Your bromeliade is cool and healthy looking. What wonderful flowers! Fingers crossed that your weather settles down now and gets back to normal for the season.

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    1. ‘Orange Storm’ seems to develop a more shapely form than the more traditional sorts. I suspect that it was bred for that. It is more practical than older sorts for our refined landscapes. However, I intend to grow three of the older sorts as well, even if only for my own garden. There is a white one here that is not very interesting, and would be unimpressive within our landscapes. The old orangish pink sort is quite impressive, but develops rampant form. It would be an asset to unrefined areas of the landscape here, on the edges of forested areas, but where it could still get irrigation. A more compact red sort remains where an old cabin was demolished years ago. It is my favorite color of all the flowering quinces here, but I have no idea how it will grow within a refined landscape, since it is only surviving outside of a landscape now.

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      1. What abundance of beauty! It is wonderful to have choices and alternatives. I’d love to see your white one! My C. ‘Contorta’ arrived earlier this week, but I can’t put it out until after this next cold spell since it came from GA. It should be lovely in a year or 3.

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      2. White is my favorite color, but is not so great for all flowers. The flowers of the white flowering quince look like popcorn, so are not as striking as orange, red or pink flowers of the species. Also, this particular cultivar grows very slowly, so after many years, is still quite small. It was originally bonsai stock, so could be a cultivar that was developed specifically for bonsai.

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      3. Are you growing it in a container or in the ground? A quince bonsai in a container would be lovely. It is very hard to photograph white flowers because of the way the reflect sunlight. They are easier to photograph on cloudy days, or early or late when the sun is at a low angle. White flowers need to be set off in a setting where they shine. I always enjoy them and probably don’t select white varieties nearly enough. They are very peaceful and calming.

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      4. It had been in a large planter for years, but had not grown much. I needed to remove it, so canned it and brought it here. It is not doing much more than it did in the planter box.

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    1. Gads! I have NO idea of what to do with all those Canna. As I mentioned, some of those cans contain enough rhizomes for two or more cans. I just crowded them in because I did not know what else to do with them. I should have put them out on the roadside for neighbors. I am a nurseryman, so instinctively want to grow things as efficiently and as abundantly as possible. The land where I would like to field grow these is not yet ready, and will not be for a while.

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      2. But then what?! I am considering growing them, but only for the rhizomes. I do not want to can them like all the other horticultural commodities that I have been involved with.

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    1. The sixteen cans that are to the left are some sort of Canna musifolia, which can be difficult to eradicate. Furthermore, unlike the flashier hybrids, it generates viable seed. There are a few more at the opposite end of the row that are from one of the landscapes at work, and may have been there since 1968. Even gophers can not kill it. I do not mind sharing it with neighbors, but only if they know what they are getting.

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    1. I HAVE NO IDEA! I would like to field grow them in the future, but the land where I would do so is not yet ready, and will not be until next winter at the earliest. I will need to share these with neighbors this summer. They are in grungy recycled cans and poorly mixed media, so are not appropriate to a retail market. (The media should be mostly compost from horses and the big industrial kitchen here, but includes quite a bit of decomposed granite from the old ball field where the compost pile was.) If I continue to grow them in the future, they can be sold as bare root rhizomes. They are SO EXTREMELY profuse! Some types can more than quadruple annually. They are fun, but this is ridiculous.

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    1. They will likely be given to neighbors as they grow. I intend to retain a few of each cultivar, and more of the important cultivars. I would like to field grow their rhizomes in the future, but the land where I want to grow them is not ready yet. When it is, only a few cans of each cultivar will go a long way. I suppose I will always be a nurseryman.

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    1. These Canna were not grown for retail. They are in substandard media within grungy recycled cans. I will give them to whomever wants them, and retain a few of each. They are ridiculously prolific! If I were growing them in nursery production, there would be at least twice as many here. Billbergia nutans can be quite prolific as well, which is why I am mostly ignoring it, and allowing it to get crowded within its can. Flowering quince is very different from fruiting quince, which is Cydonia oblonga. Some of the old cultivars produce a few small and spongy fruit, but this one has not, at least yet.

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      2. That was most likely made with fruiting quince, Cydonia oblonga. Flowering quince rarely generates only a few small and spongy fruits that lack sufficient pectin for jelly, although they can be used for jelly with added pectin. Modern hybrids are less likely to generate fruit than the old fashioned sort. I still grow a copy of a fruiting quince that I grew up with. The fruit is big, and was mostly used for something like applesauce, or something like small apple pies. The ‘pies’ were just halfs of fruits with the core removed and replaced with a scoop of sugar and a bit of cinnamon. Although the fruit is much more aromatic than apples, it is blandly flavored, so got quite a bit of sugar and cinnamon added. I think it was grown because the fruit lasted so long, and even longer than’Pippin’ apples, and also to provide pectin. I do not remember quince jelly, but I do remember that quince scraps, such as peels and cores, provided pectin extract that got canned to add to summer fruits that lacked sufficient pectin to jell, such as apricots and peaches. Apple peels and cores, as well as crabapples, did the same.

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      6. Fruitless types are very different. They do not get very big, and bloom much more profusely. Fruiting sorts are larger, and bloom with their white flowers partially obscured by their foliage. I really like mine, but it is not particularly pretty to those who do not know what it is.

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      13. The old fashioned sort gets quite large, but with simpler single flowers that are a bit more orangish than ‘Double Take Scarlet’, but a bit more pinkish or reddish than the ‘Double Take Orange’.

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    1. They grow like weeds, which might be why they are uncommon. The flowers are interesting, and are nice cut flowers that hang downward from a vase. However, the foliage is . . . less than appealing as it gets overgrown. I will continue to grow it in my own garden, but not at work.

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    1. We need to give away most of them. We added only a few to the landscapes here, confined to urns, since they are not compatible with the style of our landscapes. As a nurseryman, I feel compelled to grow more of them, and could have grown much more if the resources had been available. As they are, many of the cans contain much more rhizomes than they should. After this summer, there should be only a few cans of each cultivar, or perhaps only a single can that I can split into four over winter.

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  11. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Snow, Rain, Wind, Frost, Etcetera – Tony Tomeo

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