Poinsettias and Christmas Just Go Together

Facts about poinsettias.

  • Topic: Poinsettias
  • Author: Cindy Bellinger
  • Keywords: holiday, Christmas, poinsettia, decoration, Other, holidays, sets, decorations
  • Date: December 2002

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While living along the California coast some 30 years ago, I had a a huge poinsettia bush in the backyard. I was continually hacking away at it. When I moved to New Mexico, I was amazed that people actually bought poinsettias. Weren’t they weeds?

Now I join the millions of people who buy these plants because there is no other plant that says Christmas like the poinsettia. Those red leaves during the dark days of winter easily bring cheer into any home.

Did you know?—

  • There are over 100 varieties of poinsettias.
  • They aren’t poisonous.
  • All 50 states commercially grow the poinsettia; but most come from California.

In the early 1800s President Andrew Jackson appointed Joel Roberts Poinsett as our first ambassador to Mexico. Poinsett’s interest in botany took him wandering over the countryside looking for new plants. He’d heard of a red flowering plant used in the nativity processional by Franciscan priests near Taxco, Mexico. Then in 1828 he found a roadside shrub with large red flowers and realized this must be the plant. Then he found entire hillsides covered with the red leafed plant.

Poinsett took cuttings of the plant, and upon his return to South Carolina began propagating them in his greenhouse. (He died on December 12, which is now National Poisettia Day.)

The scientific name is Euphorbia plucherrima and the plant is a member of the spurge family. The Aztecs began cultivating the plant during the 14th to 16th centuries. They called it “Cuetlaxochitle,” and used the sap to control fevers and the red leaves as a dye.

The poinsettia is a warm weather plant, and in Mexico wild poinsettias are short-day plants that bloom only when they receive a critical length of uninterrupted darkness, about thirteen hours a day. This is why they come into full bloom with the shortening days of the winter months.

How did the poinsettia became a holiday symbol? It’s all because of marketing.

In the early 1900s, a German immigrant, Albert Eckes began growing poinsettias at his family’s orchard and dairy farm in California near Hollywood. The family also had a cut flower business and set up a roadside stand in Beverly Hills. Then, because of the plant’s propensity to bloom during the winter, Eckes’ son Paul thought the poinsettia would make an ideal holiday flower.

In 1923 the Eckes moved down the coast to Encinitas, where the climate for growing poinsettias was nearly identical to its native locale in Mexico. Between 1923 and 1963, the ranch mainly produced field-grown poinsettias. During this time, Paul Eckes began a massive campaign to keep the plant before the public during the holiday season. One strategic placement was on the Bob Hope Christmas Special. The exposure worked. The poinsettia is now as much a part of the holiday season as Christmas trees.