Theresa, that garden is amazing. I love the colour and texture. I am so looking forward to growing the purple perilla!! I really want some colourful foliage plants in the garden and my containers this year. Last fall I 'gathered' some canna seeds from a canna that was rather close to the fence when I was walking my dogs. I shared some and ended up with three of them. I wanted them to grow in some of my containers, to add some height and didn't really care about the flower, so hadn't planned to let them flower, unless of course they really wanted to and they looked good. They hadn't really had all that great a flower anyway. I couldn't help myself a few weeks ago and I started all three seeds. They grew so fast I couldn't believe it. Two of them are about six inches tall and the other one is a little stunted thing about an inch tall. They are really bright green leaves right now but should turn a nice kind of bronzey colour when they grow up. I just hope they don't take over the house before I can get them outside, which could be the end of May or first of June.**sigh** I also have some nice cannas that I got in a trade last summer, that I will plant in the garden. I will plant them fairly close together and wonder if they will all cross polinate and the seeds be fun to grow and see what they look like. I got 'Midnight Sun', 'Florence Vaughn', and 'Pretoria'. They didn't flower for me as I never got them planted out and they stayed in pots that were too small. I am really looking forward to seeing them flower this year. I also bought a NOID one from a sweet little man at a yard sale a couple of years ago that has purple leaves and a scarlet coloured flower that I grew in a plastic pot last year. It multiplied so much that the pot was all distorted from the tubers pushing on it. Lois

Okay, it's me again--the original poster. :) Thanks for being patient with me. Let me try again. I put five photos of the mystery Canna(?) here: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dzechman@prodigy.net/album?.dir=95ca The photos show the full sized plant as well as closeups of the flower spike and the flowers themselves, at the beginning of the blooming and a few days later in full bloom. My hand is in one photo for a relative size idea. I think I also submitted one of the photos to the Name That Plant category here at Gardenweb. (but now I can't find it, hrmph). It's not a Bird of Paradise--I've got some of those in the yard, too. :) They're unhappy though; I think the three large clumps need to be dug up and separated. There are a couple of bushes in the yard I can't identify either. It's like a treasure hunt learning about these new plants. There's a "pineapple guava" bush that's just amazing and strange. It gives a ton of fruit IF I hand pollinate all the flowers. Whew! Thanks! David Here is a link that might be useful: My plant photos on Yahoo

There's also a variety called 'spotted Lucifer' that looks like that. Both Picasso and spotted Lucifer are described as growing short to medium, but that height may vary depending upon growing conditions. President is described as medium in height. Ok, so at this point, I did a web search for 'Canna Harvest Yellow' and lo and behold! The variety exists and is described as 'Taller Medium'. You appear to be correct. You might be interested in checking out the other two varieties as they are certainly interesting by comparison and hint at a common ancestor for all three.

I'm posting on this just to get it to move to the bottom of the page. Sorry I didn't know it would stay on top. :O)