Canna 'Yellow King Humbert' Burbank is a medium sized Italian Group Canna cultivar; foliage green, but often variegated purple markings and occasionally whole leaves purple, oval shaped, spreading habit; oval stems, coloured green + purple; flower clusters are open, spotted, colours yellow with red spots, often large red markings and occasionally whole flowers red, staminodes are large; seed is sterile, pollen is sterile; rhizomes are long and thin, coloured white and purple; tillering is prolific.
Origins
The earliest reference to this cultivar is in a US Gardening catalogue of 1929. It was reputed to be a mutation of Canna 'Roi Humbert' (synonym C. 'King Humbert') and was confirmed to be such by Dr Khoshoo in his published papers. On rare occasions it has also been known to produce stems where the foliage is all dark and the flowers are all red. That is the source of Canna 'Red King Humbert', amongst others.
All main catalogue references until the early 1990s are consistent in their descriptions of an Italian Group chimera cultivar, yellow with red spots. However, after that period there was some confusion and it found itself being used as a synonym for C. 'Austria' and its description was also confused with C. 'Roma'.
