Carl Ludwig Sprenger

Carl Ludwig Sprenger was a German botanist, born on 30 November 1846 at Güstrow, Mecklembourg and died 13 December 1917 on the island of Corfu.

Canna (Italian Group) ‘Austria‘, Sprenger 1893

Sprenger lived in Naples from 1877 to 1917, and was a partner in the horticultural house of Dammann & Co. of San Giovanni a Teduccio, Naples, Italy. David Fairchild praised Sprenger, “a brilliant botanist who had established a nursery…he was one of those real plantsmen who both know the names of plants and how to grow them. Sprenger was known to roam mountain sides and meadows. He enthusiastically collected seeds for botanical gardens and freely gave of his knowledge to others.

The eruption of Vesuvius [April 4, 1906] buried his plants under volcanic ash, destroying hundreds of his best specimens.” Sprengers’ life was in ruins.

In 1907, Kaiser Wilhelm (William II) purchased Achilleion, a garden with a palace on Corfu (Kerkyra). Sprenger became supervisor of the Kaiser’s garden.

Sprenger’s life had had no sound; Fairchild wrote that he was “very deaf”. Perhaps he loved plants so much because they spoke in colours, shapes, and scents. In the end, he did not even have flowers. The man who surrounded himself with plants died December 13, 1917, a hostage of war. Being German and living on a Greek island in the middle of the First World War was high-risk, but at 70 years of age he was not prepared to leave behind his beloved plants and move to another country. Nobody was able to establish what really happened, but it is hard to see what threat a 71 year old, deaf, botanist posed that justified his murder.

Canna (Italian Group) ‘Italia’, Sprenger 1893

Sprenger had concluded that by constantly interbreeding the large flowered Crozy varieties nothing novel or more remarkable could be secured, and he, therefore, experimented with some new blood, employing for this purpose the Canna flaccida, a species of the southern USA, of medium height and large flowers, with one specially developed petal. The result was what became known as the ‘Orchid’ Cannas or the ‘Italian’ Cannas. A few years later, Luther Burbank in the USA pursued a similar approach.

• 1893, Canna ‘Italia’ and Canna ‘Austria’

• 1894, Canna ‘Atalanta’, Canna ‘America’, Canna ‘Burgundia’ and Canna ‘Allemaniana’

• 1895, Canna ‘Bavaria’, Canna ‘Britannia’ , Canna ‘Heinrich Seidel’

• 1896, Canna ‘Pandora’

• 1897, Canna ‘Edouard André’, Canna ‘Parthénopé’ and Canna ‘Roma’

• 1907, Canna ‘Wilhelm Bofinger’, Canna ‘Pluto’

• 1909, Canna ‘Roi Humbert’

Sprenger also created and named 122 beautiful Yucca hybrids in the years from 1897 to 1907.

Canna ‘Richard Wallace’ is Crozy Group

Canna ‘Richard Wallace’ in 1964 Montgomery Ward catalogue

The 1964 Montgomery Ward Catalogue included 10 Canna cultivars. Amongst the offerings is Canna ‘Richard Wallace’ with a photograph clearly showing it as a Crozy Group cultivar. The description simply states “Canary-yellow blooms. Low growing.”

What is generally being sold as C. ‘Richard Wallace’ is not low-growing, being at least 1 metre (3’3″) tall. Moreover, examine the top photograph and it is immediately obvious that the labellum (lip) is narrower than the staminodes, and the stamen is small, compared with the Italian Group where the stamen is always very wide, and the labellum is much narrower than the staminodes. The definition of a Crozy Group cultivar.

What is on general sale as Canna ‘Richard Wallace’ is obviously an Italian Group cultivar, but which funnily enough matches exactly the description of Canna ‘Austria’, and is, like all that group, seed sterile. It has a labellum wider than the staminodes, and a very wide stamen. It is also seed sterile.

Catalogues from the venerable house of Wilhelm Pfitzer, the breeders of this cultivar, clearly state that Canna ‘R. Wallace’ was a Crozy Group cultivar.

Canna ‘R. Wallace’ was entered in the 1907 Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) outdoor trials as a gladiolus-type (Crozy Group) and not an orchoides-type (Italian Group). That evidence is overwhelming, because the RHS do not make elementary mistakes, especially in the pedantic Victorian age. The entry in the year book simply states “Canna ‘R. Wallace’ — Gladiolus-flowered, pale yellow, faintly spotted with rose.” That description matches exactly the specimen that we, at Claines Canna, purchased from the old and revered house of Suttons, who hold the Royal Warrant. That is a Crozy Group specimen, and is seed fertile. We still have it growing, although suffering with Canna virus and grown away from the main collection.

But it is not only at Suttons in the UK where the correct cultivar was being sold up until recently. Referring to the International Canna Group I noted a posting by Kent Kelly of Quality Gladiolus in the USA, dated Tue Aug 19, 2003 1:21 am, who stated that, “Our original Richard Wallace contained two types of look-alike cultivars. The flower was identical but one was an `assumed’ triploid and produced no seed, and the other produced seed that may have been sterile (not sure – did not try to grow). Our planting stock originated from Sarver Nursery of California.”

Probably, at one time Quality Gladiolus also had the real-thing growing there, as well as the incorrectly named Italian Group cultivar now in wide circulation.

Wikipedia Canna cultivar groups

New Italian Group cultivar

While most Canna breeders have been concentrating on developing new cultivars from the Crozy originating stock or even crossing back to species, Mr Bernard Yorke, in Australia, has also been experimenting with the Italian Group (what used to be called x orchoides) material. The picture below is a reminder to us all that we should not forget about the other possibilities.

The picture above has a distinct resemblance to Canna ‘Wyoming’. The pollen parent is either C. ‘Wyoming’ or C. ‘Pretoria’, as experiments were made with both as pollen parents at the same time. Mr Yorke commented that “The leaves are just a shade lighter than C. ‘Wyoming’, but the flower is remarkably similar. Where the interest lies in this seedling is the fact that this is probably the first published large floppy orchoide type bred in the modern era of Canna breeding. The modified petal-like staminoides seems particularly large too. Even larger than the old hybrids of this type produced by Dammann & Co. and Wintzer a century ago.”

[Ed. The only recent cultivars of this type appear to have been mutations. Whilst the diploid Italian Cannas are all seed sterile, the pollen is still fertile, although less fertile than that from the Crozy types, and is still a practical proposition that offers different possibilities. The colour range available from Italian cannas is restricted, but they still have interesting possibilities.]