Canna Black Cleopatra - Indian shot

The Canna 'Black Cleopatra' boasts a beautiful chocolate-purple foliage and bright red flowers from summer to autumn. It is a superb plant, perfect for exotic borders, but also for creating large pots on the terrace. Like all cannas, this variety is slightly hardy. Outside the mildest winter regions, its rhizomes should be unearthed in autumn and stored in a dry and cool place during winter.

The Canna (x) generalis 'Black Cleopatra' is a horticultural selection by Ernest Turc (France). It is a variant of the cultivar 'Cleopatra' with broad burgundy to brown leaves, producing an abundance of red flowers striped with yellow towards the throat. Like all cannas, this plant belongs to the family of Cannaceae, in the same group as gingers (Hedychiums) and banana trees.

From a thick and knotty rhizome emerges in spring a well-dense clump, composed of numerous large and wide lanceolate entire leaves. Their colour ranges from yellowish-green striped with brownish-purple to almost uniform deep purplish-burgundy in full sun. Thin flowering stems reaching a height of 1.20 m emerge from the foliage, from July until frost if care is taken to regularly prune the faded flowers before fruit formation. The asymmetrical flowers with shiny petals are clustered in dense spikes in the upper part of the stems. The canna's vegetation is deciduous, its beautiful leaves dry in winter. The stump can withstand short frosts of about -4°C in not too wet soil.

The Cannas are ideal plants to bring a touch of exoticism and lushness to summer borders. Plant them in groups of about ten rhizomes, of the same variety or mixing foliage and flower colours. The Canna 'Black Cleopatra' allows for easily creating large lush pots on the terrace or balcony. Very ornamental when placed alone, it will be enhanced by the presence of common castor beans or compact Colocasias like 'Sangria'. Cultivate this plant like a Dahlia, unearth the rhizomes before frost to replant them in spring.