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Christmas is just around the corner and along with sparkling Christmas lights, trees and decorations, we’ll see the beautiful red leaves of the poinsettia coloring our businesses and homes. One Arkansas-based nursery, Westwood Gardens in Fayetteville, is helping to bring the beauty to you this season as they cultivate poinsettias for customers around Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.
The poinsettia is known as the Christmas flower and it has an unusual connection to Arkansas. Joel Roberts Poinsett was a U.S. statesman from South Carolina. He held a number of public positions in South Carolina before becoming a Congressman. Poinsett County in Arkansas is named for Joel Poinsett, even though the statesman never actually visited Arkansas. However, Poinsett brought the first poinsettia back from Mexico in a move that eventually changed Christmas for everyone.
The poinsettia is native to Mexico. While Poinsett was fulfilling his role as the first ambassador to Mexico, he came across the bright red plant. Since he was also an avid botanist, Poinsett sent a few plants back to his home in South Carolina where he maintained his own greenhouse. From there, Poinsett gave the plant to a few friends and botanists, who began cultivating the plant for its red blooms. The poinsettia was first sold commercially around 1836 and so named to honor Poinsett.
The poinsettia naturally blooms in late fall. This timing, along with its red and green colors, helped associate it with the Christmas season. Plant nurseries around the country like Westwood Gardens in Fayetteville grow millions of poinsettias for the holidays.
This year, the nursery ordered 13,000 poinsettia clippings. The clippings arrived in August and the staff began the tedious job of growing the plants. Poinsettias are temperamental, according to Mindy Perkins, who is responsible for the poinsettias growing at Westwood Gardens. They grow best between 68 and 70 degrees and need at least twelve hours of darkness each night. During the day, they need bright but indirect sunlight to yield those beautiful red leaves. They’re susceptible to cold temperatures, so they’re kept in the greenhouses and carefully monitored.
Like most nurseries, Westwood Gardens has poinsettias in full bloom by Thanksgiving, when the flowers tend to appear in stores and mark the beginning of the holiday season. They are the nursery’s bestseller in winter. Many of the flowers will be sold as fundraisers for local and regional groups.
Though the traditional Christmas poinsettia is a green plant with red leaves, the plants actually come in over 100 different colors and varieties. You can find plants with white, pale pink or peach leaves, and even a variety called ice punch, which has red leaves with white in the center.
No matter which color is your preference, many of us have wondered what to do with poinsettias after the holiday season. Throwing out the beautiful plants seems wasteful. It’s possible to keep your poinsettia growing throughout the year, but they require a bit of work. Continue to water your poinsettia and keep it in a room where it will receive indirect sunlight until March. Once it stops flowering, prune it back. By May you can repot the poinsettia into a larger pot and move it outside if temperatures won’t drop below 60 degrees at night.
As fall approaches, getting your poinsettia to rebloom can be difficult. Place the plant in complete darkness for twelve to fifteen hours every day, and allow it to have at least six hours of indirect sunlight. The extended darkness signals to the plant that it’s time to bud. After eight to ten weeks, the poinsettia should begin to bud and you can bring it out in time for the holiday season and enjoy its beautiful color again.
When Joel Roberts Poinsett sent the first poinsettia clippings from Mexico, he didn’t realize the flower would become a staple in the Christmas season. Though he served the U.S. in many capacities, it’s the Christmas flower that became his legacy. Poinsett died on December 12th, 1851. Now December 12th is celebrated as Poinsettia Day. This Christmas season, find a local Arkansas nursery like Westwood Gardens that cultivates its own poinsettias and enjoy the plant’s beautiful colors all season long and beyond.
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