This non-native lifeform is now locally established in greater North America. This lifeform is found north of the Equator in the New World tropics. This lifeform is frequently domesticated.

Canna indica (equal Canna edulis) is native to northern South America. This popular garden plant can be recognized by its red flowers and purple leaves. The purpurea variety grows to six feet tall.

Canna genus was originally native to the New World tropics, but members of this genus are now widely established in many warm and tropical areas.  There are nine species of perennial herbs with rhizomes in this genus.  Other authors state 25 species are in the genus. The flowers are in a terminal raceme or panicle.  There are eight species and two hybrids now established in greater North America,  including Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Canna family (Cannaceae) is a small family with a single genus with less than 100 species. This family was initially almost entirely restricted to the New World tropics, but is now spreading over a much wider range. (There is a confusing contradiction in the literature as to the approximate number of species in this family.)  One species (Canna flaccida) with  large yellow flowers is found naturally in the Coastal Region from Florida to the Carolinas and also to Mississippi. (C. indica is surviving as an introduced species also.)

Scitamineae Order contains the Banana, Ginger, Canna, and Arrowroot Tropical Families.

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In  the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.