List of Canna species

Canna species have been categorised by two different taxonomists in the course of the last three decades. They are Paul Maas, from the Netherlands and Nobuyuki Tanaka from Japan. Both reduced the number of species from the 50-100 that had been accepted previously, and assigned most to being synonyms. Inevitably, there are some differences in their categorisations, and the individual articles on the species describes those differences.

The reduction in numbers is also confirmed by work done by Kress and Prince at the Smithsonian Institution, however, this only covers a subset of the species range.

The Taxomic revision of the family Cannaceae in the New World and Asia, by Dr Tanaka. is the latest authoritative reference, allied with the proposal to conserve the name Canna tuerckheimii over C. latifolia. The most exhaustive work on Canna synonyms is that in the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP).

The following list is based on the Taxomic revision of the family Cannaceae in the New World and Asia, by Dr Tanaka and the proposal to conserve the name Canna tuerckheimii over C. latifolia.

Canna species synonyms are the inevitable consequence of the difficulty of communication up to the late part of the 19th century. From the late 18th century plant searchers were being despatched to all corners of the world and bringing back to their employers all the plant treasures of the world.

The problem then became one of identifying the specimens. The capitals and places of learning in the major countries of the world all had botanical gardens and private nurseries and collectors, all intent on discovering and naming new species.

Initially the early taxonomists only had the written word with which to communicate and letters, written in Latin, might take weeks to complete their journeys. Black-and-white photography eased the communication difficulty and the invention of the telephone and colour photography, and more recently the World Wide Web have meant that places of learning can now communicate freely and much of the duplication of names has been resolved.

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