Poinsettia plants can brighten your home all winter
If you have been in a grocery store or bigbox store recently, I am sure you have seen red poinsettias for sale. Red poinsettias are the favorites; they easily outsell all the other colors. But in recent years, newer colors have become popular. Some of the new varieties are various purple, magenta and pink hues, as well as speckled and two-toned.
Poinsettias are members of the spurge family. They contain a milky sap that can cause a rash, but the flowers and bracts are not poisonous, contrary to what many people believe. They are native to Mexico and Central America, where they grow as shrubs to be more than 6 feet tall. The Aztecs cultivated them hundreds of years ago. In the 1800s, Joel Roberts Poinsett became the United States’ first ambassador to Mexico. He was also a botanist, and he brought the plants that now bear his name to his greenhouse in South Carolina.
The poinsettia is known as the Christmas flower, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from buying them to brighten up the home over winter. They provide a bright indoor focal point when the landscape is so drab outdoors. The colorful part of a poinsettia is a specialized leaf called the bract. The real flowers are about the size of a pea and found in yellow and red clusters at the end of the branch.
If you want high-quality new varieties or different sizes of plants, you will have to shop at a florist, greenhouse or nursery, not at the grocery store or hardware store. This year, some pots are planted with two or three colors of poinsettia each. You can get the same effect by buying your favorite colors and sticking the potted plants into a larger pot. Poinsettias come in many sizes, from a 4-inch plant that can be worn as a corsage to a 6-foot tree.
When choosing a blooming poinsettia, look for dark green leaves all the way to the bottom and no dead spots on the leaves. The true flowers should be starting to bloom. Don’t buy plants if the true flowers are dried up, if any of the bracts have dried, if there are dead edges or if the lower leaves are turning yellow or fall off with just a slight tug. If you turn over a leaf and it is covered with small white insects, do not buy the plant.
A problem with some new poinsettia cultivars is that they are brittle and lose branches easily. Look for plants with mostly vertical stems and few horizontal stems, especially if they are going to be taken home in a paper sleeve. Some growers install a plastic ring on the pot that supports the branches about 5 inches above the pot rim. Speaking of paper sleeves, don’t buy a plant that has been sitting in the sleeve for a few days, as the lower leaves will begin falling off from lack of sunlight.
Don’t expose the plant to drafts of any kind, especially plants in pots on the floor. Keep the soil evenly damp all the time. Check the plant daily until you determine how much water it will need. Big plants and pots with several plants in them take a lot of water. They also prefer temperatures of 65 to 75 degrees F. The cooler temperature makes the flowers last longer.
If it dries out, it will begin losing leaves. If it is overwatered or left to sit in water, the roots will die and then the whole plant will die.
If you don’t want a poinsettia, several other plants make great indoor decorations in the winter. Try cyclamen, azaleas, hydrangea, miniature rose, orchids, African violets, anthurium and any others that your florist recommends. There should be no reason you can’t enjoy fresh flowers all winter.