Canna 'Bengal Tiger'
cultivar of the canna plant

Canna 'Bengal Tiger' is an Italian Group canna cultivar with variegated foliage; plant height 190 cm; foliage height 140 cm; upright stems and gently spreading leaves; ovoid foliage, background of green (137A); veins variegated yellow (mostly 13B), but paler in places (13D); maroon edge to leaf; staminodes, labellum and stamen bright orange (28B) blushed a darker, reddish (32A) in places; yellow (15A) on edges; stigma deep orange-red; petals strongly flushed red. The flower has a crumpled silk appearance; seed and pollen has very low fertility levels; rhizomes thick, up to 3 cm in diameter.
Gallery
History
Originated at the Agri Horticultural Society of India, Bengal in the 1960s. It was later transported to the African continent, by Sydney Percy-Lancaster, the Secretary of the Society, when he retired to Rhodesia; hence the synonym of C. 'Pretoria' when it was discovered by US plant collectors in South Africa in the late 1960s. Also imported to the United States from India in 1963 by Glasshouse Works.
In 2002, granted the 'Award of Garden Merit' (AGM) in the Canna outdoor trials held at RHS Wisley, under the synonym of Canna 'Striata'
Synonyms
The following list of synonyms is not complete, as some new ones have been created recently.
Canna 'African Yellow' - confined to Europe
Canna 'americanallis var. variegata' - confined to USA
Canna 'aureo-striata'
Canna 'Damascus Road' - confined to Southern USA
Canna 'Imperialis'
Canna 'Kapit'
Canna 'malawiensis variegata'
Canna 'Pallida Variegata' - confined to Europe
Canna 'Panach'
Canna 'Panaché' - confined to France.
Canna 'Pretoria'
Canna 'Pretoria Dwarf'
Canna 'Striata' - this name belongs to an early cultivar from 1868, still being grown in Europe.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Canna 'Bengal Tiger'” is cultivar of the canna plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Canna, 'Bengal and Tiger', not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “cultivar of the canna plant” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 20, 2021. The linked authority identifier is Q5032540. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1963, 2002 and 1868.
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This entry incorporates text from “Canna 'Bengal Tiger'” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.