Red-Flowered Canna Plants

Using Red Cannas

• Red cannas' tall, narrow stems of blooms and eye-catching foliage draw attention away from lower-growing plants. Use them in containers, in standalone mass groupings or in borders where their size and texture contrast with less substantial plants. Cannas are tender perennials, surviving outdoors where winter temperatures remain above zero F. In colder climates, they can overwinter indoors, where they'll keep blooming with adequate light and water.

Dwarf Red Cannas

• Dwarf and semi-dwarf red cannas bring all the tropical flair of their larger relatives to small garden spaces. The diminutive Tropical Red cultivar stands between 20 and 28 inches high. Coarse, green leaves spreading 1½ to 2 feet make its scarlet-red flowers brighter in comparison. The green-and-burgundy-leaved Lucifer canna cultivar reaches 2 to 3 feet tall, and just 12 to 24 inches wide. Yellow margins add spice to its bright-red blossoms. The Red Wine cultivar shares Lucifer's compact dimensions, with deep-red flowers and deep-burgundy leaves.

Dark-Leaved Red Cannas

• Cannas pairing red flowers and dark foliage include the Australia cultivar. Australia's burgundy-black leaves make a striking background for nearly black, upright stems of bright-red blooms. Growing 4 to 5 feet tall, with an up to 2-foot spread, Australia begins blooming in July and continues until frost. Position it with the sun backlighting its leaves for additional drama. Two-to-3-foot-wide Tropicanna Black's midsummer-to-fall, orange-red flowers open atop 3-to-6-foot stems. Its glossy, deep-purple leaves border on black when new. Their color softens as they age. Expect hummingbirds to visit these and other red-flowering cannas.

Aquatic Red Canna

• Aquatic red canna (Canna glauca), a South American native, grows 4 to 6 feet high in the wild. Its modest, light-yellow flowers ground upright stems of narrow, bluish-green leaves. This canna's tolerance of shallow standing water led to its hybridization during the 1970s. The Longwood Gardens of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, cross-bred this canna with several other species to produce the Longwood hybrid water canna cultivars. Of this quartet, Canna Endeavour has irislike red blooms above paddle-shaped, blue-green foliage. Mature Endeavour plants stand up to 6 feet high and 1½ feet wide. They grow along pond edges or in as much as 8 inches of water.