'The President' is a common cultivar of Canna or Canna-Lily in the Midwestern & Eastern US. It has scarlet or orangish-red flowers and green leaves. In the North it is a popular annual flower. When the frost kills the foliage in late fall, one digs up the tubers. I used to cut the tubers into pieces and store them in carboard boxes in slightly moist peatmoss in a cool inside location for the winter. I would start them again in a small greenhouse in April and plant them out in mid to late May in northeast Illinois. They grow fast and are used as the tall annual for a background or in the middle of a detached bed. Bumblebees really like the flowers. Unfortunately, the Japanese Beetle likes to eat holes in the flowers. I twice accidentally killed Bumblebees, thinking they were Japanese Beetles crushing them with my fingers, ouch! When Canna are grown in rich soil and it is a wet year, they grow bigger; so a President Canna can be only about 3 feet high one year and be too blessed by rain to grow 6 or even 7 feet high another year.

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