Poinsettia Day —by Jinny Batterson
December 12 has been proclaimed “Poinsettia Day” in the United States. The designation honors a plant brought to the U.S. by Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States Ambassador to Mexico (1825-1829). Poinsett’s love of botany persisted while he trained as a physician. His career mostly went a different direction. While serving in Mexico, Poinsett continued to maintain hothouses on his Greenville, South Carolina plantations. In about 1828, he sent some poinsettias back from Mexico to be propagated. He later gave cuttings to John Bartram of Philadelphia, who introduced the plant to other nurserymen. Over time, the poinsettia in many variations has become a top selling Christmas plant, with about 33 million poinsettias sold each year.
Our 2019 experiments with “forcing” the two poinsettias given us by a neighbor after last year’s holidays were not entirely successful. Although the plants survived two successive transplantings—from pot to ground once frost was finished in spring, from ground back to pot before autumn’s first frost—they didn’t produce the same beautiful red bracts as store-bought plants. I’m not sorry we tried. Even though our “home growns” were spindly and mostly stayed green, we learned from our efforts. Any plants we carry over until next year will be treated with an enhanced regimen, though likely not quite as standardized as hothouse plants. This year, as a side benefit, the exercise of taking the plants from basement to light and back twice a day has helped keep off some of this year’s holiday flab.
Below are pictures of the two types of poinsettias gracing our hearth this holiday season. May light and life grace your home as well!
full store-bought poinsettias, leggy home-grown from last year
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