Gardening: Tradition of poinsettias at Christmas started in Mexico
As we travel into the holiday season, it’s interesting to look at the history of some of our traditions that give meaning to the season.
Take for example the brightly colored poinsettia which will soon be found everywhere. One source will be the annual poinsettia sale held by the Spokane Community College Greenhouse Management Program on Thursday and Friday. The sale will run 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at the SCC Greenery, 1810 N. Greene St. The greenery is located on Ermina on the north end of the campus.
Each year as part of their course work, the second-year greenhouse students grow poinsettias to learn how to plant, grow and market a greenhouse crop they are likely to find when they graduate and join the greenhouse industry. This year, they are raising 30 varieties of poinsettias that range from chartreuse green to traditional red.
So, how did the tradition of the poinsettia come about?
The poinsettia is native to the Pacific-facing mountains of southern Mexico. There it grows in seasonally dry tropical forests as a scraggly shrub that can reach 15 feet wide and tall. Its scientific name is Euphorbia pulcherrima which means “the most beautiful plant in the genus Euphorbia.”
As with many members of the Euphorbia or spurge species, E. pulcherrima produces a unique flowering structure called a cyathium. Its colored leaves are actually bracts. The actual flower structures are in the tiny yellow center of the bracts. The bracts serve as an energy-saving device for the flowers as they bloom. As the plants begin their flowering cycle, the bracts change from green to red in the fall as the Northern Hemisphere turns away from the sun as the sunlight returns in the spring, the bracts return to green.
The Aztecs originally cultivated the poinsettia, which they called “cuetlaxochitl” and used the bracts to make a purple-red dye and the milky sap for medicine. When the Spanish arrived in Mexico in the 1600s, Franciscan monks in Taxco, Mexico, found that the brightly colored red and green plant were appropriate to include in their Nativity processions. Today, many Spanish -speaking countries still refer to the poinsettia as the “Flor de Nochebuena” which translates to “Flower of the Holy Night.”
In 1828, Joel Robert Poinsett, the first American ambassador to Mexico, discovered the plants on a visit to Taxco and had some sent to his home and greenhouses in Greenville, South Carolina, An experienced botanist, Poinsett distributed plants to botanical gardens and other botanists, including John Bartram of Philadelphia, the botanist involved in the Lewis and Clark expedition. Bartum introduced them to Robert Buist, a Pennsylvania nurseryman who began to cultivate them for the growing holiday market.
By the early 1900s, the plant had become a popular holiday tradition but was still difficult to grow indoors. California grower Paul Ecke Sr. developed the first poinsettia plants that could be grown indoors in pots. In 1923, he founded the Ecke Ranch, which today is the biggest producer and breeder of poinsettias.