The poinsettia is starting to invade the stalls of florists and garden centers, and maybe even your neighbors’ living rooms. The Christmas flower is making a big comeback! Like every year, this famous red plant is the star of the Christmas season. It owes its name to the red bracts that surround the flowers.
In the holiday season, remember to offer a poinsettia to your loved ones to wish them joy and success in the coming New Year! If you have a green thumb, you can even grow your poinsettias with patience and love.
Although red poinsettias are the most famous, this plant also has different varieties with a wide range of colors such as pink, orange, or white. Other types make the poinsettia a popular houseplant even outside of the Christmas season.
Poinsettia dries out quickly. Therefore, we recommend transplanting it in the first year in real compost. Today, in this article, we are going to learn more about the beautiful poinsettia flower including the following:
* Description
* Cultivation
* Care and maintenance
* Propagation
Description
Poinsettias may be invading our homes over the Christmas season. From November to March, they bloom and develop beautiful, deep red foliage, ideally suited to our decorated interiors for the occasion.
This tropical plant comes directly from Central America and brings a little beauty and warmth to our interiors in winter. From the Euphorbiaceae family, the free poinsettia allows us to enjoy its evergreen foliage all year round. Its general appearance is quite dense. The leaves are smooth, not very marked, and their presence is matte, almost velvety. Be careful not to rely too much on its delicate appearance. The poinsettia is poisonous. It would be best if you kept it out of the reach of children and pets.
During its flowering period, the leaves at the top of the poinsettia flower turn red. The real flower is hidden in the center as a small cluster of yellow buds.
History
This plant was known to the Aztecs as “cuetlaxochitl.” It was considered a symbol of purity and new life for warriors who died in battle and returned to earth to drink the flower nectar to reach eternity.
From the 14th to the 16th century, the Aztecs used the sap of the poinsettia to control fever and extracted a red dye from the bracts. In 1828, the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico sent some cuttings to his family in South Carolina. It was Joel Robert Poinsett who made the poinsettia so famous worldwide and who, at the same time, left his mark on the flower history.
The plant has many names. In Mexico, the country of origin, they call it “Flores de Noche Buena” (Flower of the Holy Night). At the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Ecke, a German emigrant, began producing and marketing the poinsettia in Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, and it quickly became popular.
Planting
The Christmas star is a rather fragile plant. Here are a few tips on how to plant it:
Firstly, keep the plant away from draughts and place it in a sunny spot without exposing it to direct sunlight. The ideal temperature for this plant is about 22 degrees C. Be careful with the heating in your home as it needs a humid environment.
Secondly, make sure you water it every two days so that the soil remains moist but not excessively so. Do not water it directly. We recommend placing it for fifteen minutes on a plate filled with water. You can also spray a little water on its leaves.
Thirdly, add a little liquid fertilizer every two weeks during the flowering period. Finally, keep it after the Christmas holidays, you can take it out in the garden, but make sure to protect it from cold and frost.
Cultivation
The Christmas flower is photoperiodic. It blooms when the days are shortest. That is why it traditionally grows in the autumn and winter periods, both in outdoor and indoor gardens. The rest period takes place from April to September when the days are longest. Indeed, the floral induction, the evolution of its leaf buds into flowering buds, is impossible when the poinsettia is exposed to sunlight for about 15 hours.
This original flower is nevertheless delicate and fragile, which makes it easy prey to the phytophthora. There is a kind of fungus well known to horticulturists that infect individual plants and trees (most commonly vines, apple trees, chestnut trees). It causes whitish stains and causes them to shed their leaves. Moreover, the roots are so fragile that it makes them difficult to handle: repotting this plant should require extreme precautions to keep it alive.
Care and Maintenance
Like all tropical plants, poinsettias prefer humidity. To maintain it, it is, therefore, essential to provide it with a properly heated environment, avoiding overly dry interiors.
Similarly to bonsais and orchids, it prefers rooms without draughts or direct sunlight. They like to spend the summer outside. You can take it out between May and September in full sunshine. Bring fertilizer during the summer period. A veranda, not too heated, can be ideal.
Let’s not forget that poinsettias are not supposed to shed their leaves. When this happens, something is wrong with them. If the environment is not favorable to them, they cannot amaze us with colorful flowers! Red, white, orange, and pink poinsettias all enjoy the same environment. Light, a temperature between 15 and 20 degrees F, and a large dose of humidity are sufficient for them to blossom.
Propagation
For the multiplication, cuttings are made from the mother plants every year at the beginning of spring. We advise you to soak the stems in lukewarm water to prevent them from emptying their latex during the process, as water stops the flow. These cuttings should be planted in an aerated substrate, not too packed, ideally in a clay pot.
These conditions are supposed to improve the plant’s prophylaxis. You should regularly fertilize The Christmas flower with suitable mulches in reasonable quantities. Water it routinely as soon as the soil shows signs of drainage. You should also stop watering during the resting period from April to September.
Fun Facts
In botany, the Christmas star is called Pulcherrima, which means “the most beautiful” in Latin. The German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow named it after the beautiful colors.
Did you know that being surrounded by plants makes you feel healthier? They clear your mind and reduce stress. The lovely shades of the Christmas star positively contribute to this.
The Aztecs called the poinsettia “Cuitla-xochitl.”
The Christmas star was brought to Europe in 1804 by the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
Joel Poinsett died on December 12, 1851. In the United States, on this date, Poinsettia Day is an opportunity for family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues to give each other a Christmas star as a gift.
The poinsettia is the world’s best-selling potted plant, especially during the holiday season. Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) come in a variety of sizes and colors (bright red, pink or creamy white) and adapt to everyone’s styles and ideas to become an essential part of Christmas decorations. It looks beautiful on a table during a family meal, during a romantic meeting surrounded by candles, or majestic in a tall vase on a sideboard. The flowers are the yellow buds nestled at the ends of the stems.