Re: Overwintering Cannas and Hedychium

A few comments on David's interesting suggestions:

I agree entirely that, at least as far as hedychiums are concerned, damp
seems to be more of problem here in the coastal NW of the UK than sheer
cold. After quite sustained cold spells, the commoner species usually return
by late spring, though so delayed that, whatever the summer weather, they
tend not to flower that year. After a really wet winter, even a mild one,
they are quite likely to die.

It may be true of cannas too: they certainly die here, reliably, but whether
from cold or wet I've never been able to determine. ('The corpse wouldn't
speak.')

I think it would be fair to say that cannas flower poorly if at all if kept
year-round in the open ground in the UK north of the middle of the country.
C. indica and C. ehmanii *have* both flowered here when fussed over and
coaxed  through the preceding winter in the ground but it's been hard work
and a very hit-and-miss sort of flowering. Potted-up and forced on in the
early season, as Diane describes her local authority doing, they flower
well. Well, reasonably. Even under that sort of regime, they are, for much
of the UK, as much foliage plants as (reliable) flowering plants. Which is
one reason (of several...) why I've largely given them up.

And of David's suggestions of other similar plants to try, cautleya and
roscoea do indeed both do well here - surviving both damp *and* (relatively)
cold winters and flowering splendidly even in our (distinctly) cool summers.
(Though I struggle to keep slugs and snails from chomping up the emerging
roscoea foliage.)

(Mark Brent and I have been having a competition to find the most apt [which
seems likely also to be the most disgusting] comparison for the strange seed
arrangements of cautleyas - that shapeless soft white mass in which the
seeds are embedded. Any suggestions?)

I haven't myself tried alpinias yet - they're plants on my ever-extending
shopping-list - but I know privileged folks such as Dave Poole down in
Torquay have used them extensively and successfully.

Tim
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