Poinsettias? Then vs Now. How did Poinsettias get into Christmas? It happened in Mexico where Franciscan monks began using the red-flowered shrub in the Nativity processions. This is around the time that the Mexican legend of Pepita and the “Flowers of the Holy Night” began, forever tying the red and green shrub to Christmas folklore."
"As legend has it, a young girl named Pepita was traveling to her village to visit the Nativity scene at the chapel. Pepita did not have enough money to buy a present to give the baby Jesus at the services, so she gathered a bundle of roadside weeds and formed a bouquet.
She was upset that she didn’t have more to offer, but she was reminded by her cousin that “even the most humble gift, given in love, will be acceptable in His eyes.” Upon entering the chapel and presenting her bouquet to the Nativity Jesus, the bouquet of roadside weeds miraculously turned into a bouquet of beautiful red flowers that the locals knew as Cuetlaxochitl."
The Germans described the plant in 1834. During that time Joel Roberts Poinsett introduced the flowers to the United States. He was a founder of the Smithsonian Institute and a botanist. Its common names were Mexican flame flower and painted leaf. Botanically today it is a Euphorbia Pulcherrima. Poinsettia came about with Poinsett's promotion of it in the U.S.
The great producer and developer of Poinsettias was Paul Ecke Sr. He developed the first poinsettia plants that could be grown indoors in grow pots. He began selling them at roadside stands in Hollywood, California. In 1923, he founded the Ecke Ranch, and he and his sons and grandson, maybe great-grandson by now were dominant players. Ecke Sr. developed techniques for grafting two varieties together to make a bushy, attractive plant. In the late 1980s university researcher John Dole discovered this grafting method and published it, ruining the Ecke monopoly. But not dampening their spirit as I could see their name on hybrids in trials around 2014.
I looked through the Selecta Morth America fact sheet and there are hundreds of individual hybrids and series upon series of plants.
It has been an exciting time since the 1990s if you really like Poinsettias.
These are the Poinsettia trials at Vineland Research Station quite a few years ago. You can see the hybridizers - Selecta and Ecke. Below that is Linwell Gardens - Poinsettias as far as you can see.
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