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Poinsettias: The Most Colorful of Holiday Plants
How much do you really know about this popular live decoration?
Poinsettias are probably my favorite holiday plant! They are so colorful, now available in various shades, and with the proper care, they last for a long time.
One of the first units I taught in a garden club was a holiday plant unit in 2004. My students, ages 7–11, were keen to learn about these plants that seemed to magically pop up in every store from Target to where their parents shopped for groceries. Poinsettias were only one type of holiday plant we covered but there was a lot of material, from plant care to the history of the plant to the lore and legends surrounding this colorful shrub that’s grown in a pot!
That’s right — poinsettias are shrubs when they are found growing in their native tropical climate of Mexico. They can get reach heights of ten to fifteen feet in the wild but tend to be spindly. I first realized this on a trip to Maui in 2015 when I saw a huge poinsettia near the roadside when we biked down Haleakala Volcano.
