I am just throwing this out there but maybe there are too many cannas for the container and they are choking each other. Just an idea. I bought some cannas crowded in a 10" container for HD and I seperated them and the new foliage seems fine.

zitro

I agree that crowding might be an issue. I also think that maybe it's time for these stalks to be cut back so that the smaller ones below can grow in to fill their place. If they've already bloomed and the foliage starts looking trashy, I just whack them back. Sometimes a short period of dryness followed by lots of water jump-starts mine into looking good, too.

Thank you both for your answers. On the other forum, someone suggested that watering from above may have caused the leaves to be scorched. So i'll have to make a better effort not to get the foliage wet, and i will also try to get the bulbs separated before putting them out this year. The blooms weren't all that great last summer, so maybe smaller clumps in more containers will help that also.

Thanks again!

Cannas need lots of elbow room and they multiply rather quickly. So yours were probably just crowded.

Also, do you feed them? Nutrients leak out everytime you water container plants, and cannas "eat" a lot to produce such massive foliage and blooms. So they could be hungry for space AND nutrients.

Just throwing this out there--but I have a lot of different cannas in pots. I found that the darker color leaves (such as in Wyoming) take the extremely hot sun next to my house much better than lighter color leaves which tend to brown and shrivel in the hottest places. At least that is how it seems---when next to each other in the hotter areas the dark leaves look fine and the lighter ones do better with a little shade in the afternoon. However, I am no expert and could be reading things wrongly.
Betsy