10 things you want to know about poinsettia plants

If you’ve been seeing reddish lately, it mightiness beryllium due to the fact that it’s poinsettia season, erstwhile the brightly colored plants look to beryllium everywhere. In fact, immoderate sources accidental that it’s the astir fashionable works sold successful America (followed by mums and orchids) portion others accidental it’s simply the astir fashionable vacation plant. In immoderate event, you’ll find millions of them everyplace successful December, possibly adjacent successful your ain home.

Here are immoderate different things you mightiness not cognize astir our favourite vacation plant:

• Leaves, not flowers: The beauteous reddish portions of the works we bask are really a benignant of leaves called brachts. The flowers are the tiny yellowish clusters successful the center.
• Choices abound: There are present much than 100 varieties of poinsettia successful galore colors but, arsenic Christmas approaches, reddish is inactive the astir popular, according to Teleflora.com
• Mexican beauties: Poinsettias are autochthonal to Mexico, wherever they’re called “Flor de Nochabuena,” (Christmas Eve flower) due to the fact that that’s erstwhile they typically bloom. Many confederate Mexican gardens person a ample Nochebuena bush successful the yard. The angiosperm was known successful Aztec times,  erstwhile it was utilized to marque dye and its sap arsenic medicine.
• And here’s the legend: A Mexican fable tells of a young miss who had thing to bring to religion to springiness the babe Jesus astatine Christmas, truthful she picked immoderate weeds arsenic a bouquet. The weeds were miraculously changed into poinsettias arsenic she knelt astatine the altar. Needless to say, that was considered a memorable lawsuit that cemented the usage of them arsenic a Christmas flower.
• How to prime your plant: When you’re selecting your plant, debar those with greenish astir the edges of the brachts. Also debar those with yellowish pollen from the flowers; it means the plants are past their prime. Ideally, the flowers should beryllium greenish and conscionable astir to bud.
• Is it healthy?: Look for a works that’s doubly arsenic precocious arsenic the cookware is wide and looks healthy. Plants that aren’t squished unneurotic successful a show are apt healthier. Stick your manus underneath the decorative packaging to spot if the works is getting waterlogged.
• Avoid breaking them connected the mode home: Keep successful caput that poinsettias are tropical plants from confederate Mexico. They’re fragile, truthful get a integrative sleeve to bring location successful your car, if available, to debar breakage.
• It’s a small finicky: Poinsettias, similar different beauteous things, are a spot finicky. They’re damaged erstwhile the thermometer dips beneath 50 degrees. Their favourite somesthesia scope is 65-75 degrees. They privation to beryllium watered, but tin get basal rot from overwatering. Keep the ungraded moist but not wet. They similar agleam light, but don’t privation to beryllium successful a blistery window. Don’t enactment them adjacent a heating vent. Ideally, days should beryllium lukewarm and nights cool.
• How did they get here?: Poinsettias were named aft Joel Poinsett, the archetypal U.S. ambassador to Mexico. He brought the plants to this state successful 1828, raised them successful his South Carolina greenhouse arsenic gifts for his friends and promoted their use, according to the California Pionsettia Growers website.
• You tin works them successful your garden: Poinsettias volition turn into bushes successful your plot arsenic precocious arsenic 10 feet. However, frost volition termination them and they request to beryllium pruned. If you privation them to make brightly colored brachts toward Christmas time, they request full acheronian from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., truthful don’t works them adjacent to plot lights.