Canna indica Seeds | Indian Shot

Indian shot (Canna indica) with broad banana-like leaves and narrow-petalled red flowers on a tall stem — Indian shot (*Canna indica*): the narrow, asymmetric petals are the wild form, from which the wide-petalled garden cannas were bred.

LATIN NAME: Canna indica

COMMON NAME: Indian Shot

Plant Profile

Indian shot is the wild ancestor of the garden canna, and it looks like it: broad, paddle-shaped leaves 30-60 cm long clasping a stout stem 1-2.5 m tall, and loose spikes of narrow, asymmetric red or orange flowers through summer. The round black seeds that follow are hard enough to rattle and were once used as shotgun shot, which is where the common name comes from.

It is a rhizomatous perennial from the tropical Americas, naturalized across the warm world, and in cool climates it is grown as a summer annual or lifted and stored like a dahlia. The plant wants heat and water, and it will grow in ground that stays wet enough to kill most other ornamentals.

Science & Biotechnology

The rhizome is a starch crop before it is a garden plant. Known as achira in the Andes and as Queensland arrowroot in Australia, it has been eaten for millennia, and the starch grains are large enough to be identifiable in archaeological residues, which is how its pre-Columbian cultivation has been traced.

Recent work has focused on the starch itself as an industrial material rather than a food. Canna starch has a high amylose fraction and forms films with useful barrier properties, and it has been studied for biodegradable packaging and encapsulation. The plant’s ornamental breeding is a separate literature, concentrated on flower form and on the virus complexes that accumulate in vegetatively propagated stock.

Uses & Benefits

In the garden it supplies the tropical note that bedding schemes rely on: bold foliage, height, and flowers that keep coming until the first frost. It works at the back of a border, at the edge of a pond, and in a large container where the rhizome can be kept watered.

As a crop, achira is a minor but persistent food in parts of South America and Asia, where the rhizomes are boiled or roasted and the starch extracted. In folk medicine the rhizome has a record as a cooling diuretic. The leaves are also used as a wrapping for steamed food in several cultures, a use that has outlasted most of the medicinal ones.

Growing from Seed

Canna seed is one of the hardest in the garden trade. File through the coat until you see the pale interior, or pour near-boiling water over the seed and leave it to soak for twenty-four hours, then sow 1.5 cm deep at 25-30°C. Germination is erratic, anything from four weeks to three months, and a proportion of seed will not come up at all.

Pot the seedlings into rich, moist compost and grow them on warm and bright. Plant out after the last frost in full sun, in soil that holds moisture, and water generously through the summer. In cold climates lift the rhizomes after the first frost, dry them briefly and store them in barely damp compost at 5-10°C.

Our Take

Buy plants if you want flowers this year; sow seed if you want the wild species and are prepared to wait. The seed is cheap and the germination unpredictable, which makes it a good project for someone who enjoys the uncertainty more than the result.

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