Poinsett had some greenhouses on his plantations in South Carolina, and while visiting the Taxco area in , he became very interested in the plants. He immediately sent some of the plants back to South Carolina, where he began growing the plants and sending them to friends and botanical gardens.
One of the friends he sent plants to was John Bartram of Philadelphia. At the first Philadelphia flower show, Robert Buist, a plants-man from Pennsylvania saw the flower and he was probably the first person to have sold the poinsettias under their botanical, or latin name, name 'Euphorbia pulcherrima' it means, 'the most beautiful Euphorbia'.
They were first sold as cut flowers. It was only in the early s that they were sold as whole plants for landscaping and pot plants. The Ecke family from Southern California were one of, if not, the first to sell them as whole plants and they're still the main producer of the plants in the USA.
Whatever the thinking behind it, this scatological sobriquet can hardly have been derogatory: E. Suggestive of human sacrifice and sun worship, its radiant, but sanguinary inflorescences were used in religious rites. Its bracts were a source of red dye. Its toxic milky sap had a range of applications, from controlling fevers to removing body hair.
Christianity can make converts of plants, as well as people. Bright red and burgeoning in December — here, priests claimed, Creation was anticipating the blood that the newborn Christ would one day shed for humankind. In the centuries ahead, that refulgence would take Euphorbia pulcherrima global and make it the plant of the winter holidays for countless millions, whether Christian, secular or other.
There are about commercial cultivars, ranging from dwarf to statuesque, with inflorescences that can be single and spreading or double and ruffled, and in red, plum, peach, pink, apricot, ivory and white, sometimes with contrasting veins or splashes.
To bring one to its saleable peak entails an industrial regime of grafting, bacterial inoculation, hormone control and day-length manipulation that no private gardener ought even to consider. In any case, these plants are all clones: unlike discarding a Christmas tree, to chuck one is not to bid farewell to an irreplaceable individual. I do, however, dream of planting a wild-sourced Poinsettia one day in some Mediterranean clime, and letting it go free range, gaunt, but gorgeous, just as Nature intended and a certain diplomat bagged.
Gertrude Jekyll loved bergenais, but she'd be the first to agree that the variety around today far outshines what was. Contrary to popular belief, Poinsettias are NOT poisonous. The milky sap from the stem can, however, cause minor skin irritation or mild stomach upset in pets or people. The plant does ooze a milky sap if you cut its stem, which some people are allergic to. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots.
Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Prev NEXT. Detail of the Poinsettia flower in a greenhouse in Xochimilco, Mexico. Xochimilco is known for its large floral industry and the Poinsettia flower is part of Christmas Eve celebrations in Mexico.
You'll want to water your potted poinsettia when the soil becomes dry, roughly once a week.
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