The Agri Horticultural Society of India, located in Kolkata, India, firstly under the Secretaryship of Percy Lancaster in 1892 and later that of his son Sydney Percy-Lancaster, raised the Alipore Canna Collection, which dominated canna throughout Asia and the Pacific countries.
Over 100 new varieties are known to have been raised by the society during that period, as well as importing the latest favourites from Europe and later from the USA.
On his retirement to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in southern Africa, Sydney Percy-Lancaster took with him cannas from this, his families collection, thus spreading canna cultivars to a part of the world that had previously had little exposure to the canna, other than the wild species.