Canna species have been categorised by two different taxonomists in the course of the last three decades. They are Paul Maas, from the Netherlands and Nobuyuki Tanaka from Japan. Both reduced the number of species from the 50-100 that had been accepted previously, and assigned most to being synonyms. Inevitably, there are some differences in their categorisations, and the individual articles on the species describe the differences. The reduction in the number of species is also confirmed by work done by Kress and Prince at the Smithsonian Institution, however, this only covers a subset of the species range. Tanaka's 2001 Taxonomic revision of the family Cannaceae in the New World and Asia is one source of species names, allied with the proposal to conserve the name Canna tuerckheimii over C. latifolia. The most exhaustive work on Canna synonyms is that in the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP).

List of species

The following list is based on the Taxonomic revision of the family Cannaceae in the New World and Asia, by Tanaka and the proposal to conserve the name Canna tuerckheimii over C. latifolia. , the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families and Plants of the World Online regard many of these as synonyms (most of Canna indica) but also recognise two further species, making 12 in total.

Cultivar type names

In addition, several species have been given cultivar-type names, and those are listed below: