Posts

Showing posts from December, 2012

My thoughts on Achira (Canna edulis)

Earlier this year I worked at a retail plant nursery where I was able to get lots of free plants off the dump rack.  On one occasion I lucked into a number of ornamental canna plants.  They were being "dumped" because they carried a virus which caused visible streaking on the leaves (not to be confused with the natural desirable streaking of some cultivars).  Viruses are very common in cannas.  I figured I would take them and just grow them for a season to get experience growing cannas as I had not grown them before.  I repotted them in larger pots and grew them on for the season.  Now that the winter is upon us they are going dormant.  I dumped out the first of the five potted plants and cleaned the tubers.  It took a few minutes to remove all the roots which held a lot of potting soil, but once they were all off not too much soil was left to clean off the actual tubers.  I have read very good things about the edibility of canna tubers both ...