Life cycle of Alocasia/colocasia/canna

[greendragon]

I am not sure how the life cycle of these plants work. Is there a typical amount of leaves they produce before flowering then dying? How long can you expect them to live before they die?

[Yorkshire Kris]

Alocasias and colocasias flower most years when mature given good growing conditions I suspect. A couple of mine have flowered then they produce smaller leaves for a while before resuming growing big leaves again. SOME alocasias grow tall trunks after many years.


Cannas flower when mature constantly given good growing conditons and produce bigger and bigger clumps. The centre of the clumps then die back a bit like many regular garden plants do.

[fern Rob]

Is it best to keep the canna clumps quite large instead of constantly splitting them.