Rabbits will eat canna lilies, but they’re not among this animal’s top choices. That’s terrific news for gardeners who enjoy watching their canna lilies grow and wild bunnies hop around their yards.
We’ll help you understand when your canna lilies have a greater chance of becoming a meal for rabbits and other culprits that could be eating your precious plants.
Do Canna Lilies Attract Rabbits?
So, do rabbits eat canna lilies? Most canna lilies don’t attract rabbits. The exception to this is if you have a young canna lily.
Rabbits sometimes gravitate to canna lilies with new leaf growth and buds before they flower. That’s because these plant parts are soft, making them easier for bunnies to chew.
Are Canna Lilies Rabbit Resistant?
Well-established canna lilies are rabbit resistant. That’s because these lilies have tough fibers, making it challenging for rabbits to chew.
The good news is that canna lilies are perennials that grow over five feet high. So, if you’re able to keep rabbits away from your canna lilies when they’re young, you shouldn’t have to worry about them eating new leaf and bud growth since they’ll be too high for bunnies to reach.
Canna Lilies and Toxicity
Unlike other lily plants, canna lilies don’t have toxins.
Therefore, the tough fibers make canna lilies mostly unappealing to rabbits, not the chemicals they contain.
How To Keep Rabbits Away From Young Canna Lily Plants
If you just planted your canna lilies and want to keep them out of the mouths of the wild rabbits that frequent your yard, it’s wise to use prevention methods.
One of the best ways is to build a makeshift fence around your canna lilies about three feet high—too tall for a rabbit to jump over.
If you don’t love the idea of ruining your yard’s aesthetics with a fence, consider using coffee grounds instead. Creating a thick circle of ground-up coffee beans is often an effective deterrent for rabbits.
Mixing red pepper flakes or talcum powder with the coffee grounds is an excellent strategy for making them an even more robust solution for warding off rabbits.
As a bonus, coffee grounds are effective at deterring other pests too. Aunts, snails, and slugs will go out of their way to avoid them. Deer also tend to turn up their noses to coffee grounds.
Other Animals That Eat Canna Lilies
Unless you have short canna lilies with young growth, it’s pretty easy to rule out rabbits as the cause of chew marks on their leaves. So, below are some other animals and insects that are often more significant threats to making canna lilies their meal:
- Deer
- Gophers
- Lily leaf beetle
It’s also common to encounter chipmunks, squirrels, and voles digging up canna lily bulbs for their meals.
So, there’s no need to point your finger at rabbits in this situation; rabbits would much rather eat the grass growing around canna lilies than go through the work of digging up their bulbs.
Giving Rabbits a Pass
There’s no doubt that rabbits can wreak havoc on plants in gardens. But luckily, you shouldn’t have to worry about rabbits eating your canna lilies.
If you can’t figure out what’s eating your canna lilies but know it’s an animal, putting a fence around them is often the best option. Make sure to bury it at least six inches deep to prevent burrowing animals from getting to your canna lily bulbs.