Easy to remember, right?

So I've finally gotten around to pulling the last of the plants out of the garage, and for me that means the ones that were put into tubs. The ones that have been out of sight and out of mind for the past five months or so.

More specifically the cannas, elephant ears, and a few other odds and ends. Things that are easy to recognize so can just be stored in bags or in peat in the tubs. Just pull them out and plant them up.

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Except what was obvious back in November or early December isn't so much so now. Stems shrivel, rhizomes, corms, and tubers may change color, and now I have some questions.

These are two tubs full of canna rhizomes. Obviously they're eager to get growing, not waiting until I removed them from the tubs, foliage yellow, aching for sunlight.

These must be canna 'Paton', although I'm not entirely sure. The leaves sure look like it, and I had so many different plants of it that it makes sense that I wouldn't label them for storage.

Although this bag got labeled...

...so I question if the others that are without tags are the same.

Are they the common green, red-flowered canna instead? I think the rhizomes on those are a darker color, maybe like these?

These are not labeled either, so they must be the green ones.

At least I labeled the more unique of the varieties:

The question marks aren't making me feel very good though. Why would I do that? Why wouldn't I know the name if I went to the trouble of making a tag?

I wonder what this one is?

Maybe I'll be one of those organized gardeners some day, but that might take some of the fun out of it...

I should have the following cannas:

• 'Paton'
• 'Tropicanna'
• 'Black Knight'
• 'Wyoming'
• Plain green/red flowers
• Canna indica 'Madeira'

I also have a few plants that I grew from seed this spring, which I expect to be plain green with red flowers.

I guess I should just plant these and hope that I guessed correctly on the varieties? I certainly don't want to pot them all up first and wait until the foliage helps me identify them, but that may be the safest bet.


Anybody else terrible with labeling plants, wondering what exactly you have and what to expect? (Let's start a support group!)

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