Yeppers, a canna. You can just dig up the rhisomes, knock the dirt off and store it cool, but it will be OK in a pot too. I had a funny story about these tough plants. They can, of course, be grown from seed and one year I had started a run of them in the g'house. After they'd germinated and were potted, I pitched the soil into the compost and it found its way to my vegetable garden eventually. It must have been ten years later, I see this familiar foliage coming up in the rows of tomato plants, and it's a tropicana canna. It's now in a pot, much like your pot, inside a g'house overwintering. BTW canna seed, sometimes called Indian shot is viable for up to a century. We had a large water cistern built into a hill to store spring water overflow, and when the dozer moved the soil to install it, a year later canna were all over the place coming up wild. A couple down the road whose family owned this farm said their mother had cannas in that area in the 1930s. The dormant seeds must have been buried for fifty years before the disturbance of the soil allowed them to germinate.

A better description of the plant would help more than anything I believe! How tall is the trunk? They look short and squat with big leaves to me, is that accurate? What about color? All green all over? I think I might see red on the trunk, peel down an old leaf or two and look at a fresh unwithed leaf, trunk color tells alot. I don't see any pups, not good for the future if so... I'm not good at IDing bananas yet, I'm pretty new to them really, but the devil is in the details...

Wow, that was a quick reply! Looks like it may be Smilax ecirrhata, it is native to Michigan. Thanks jaynine for your help. This quote might explain why it disappeared: "Populations of this plant are threatened by the overpopulation of White-tailed Deer", from http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/woodland/plants/up_carrionflw.html - there are lots of deer in this nature center. This post was edited by westmichiganflorafau on Wed, Jan 21, 15 at 7:40

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