STYLE : GARDENS : In the Pink

The world’s largest breeder and propagator of poinsettias sits right in the middle of Encinitas, so Southern Californians get a sneak preview of the newest varieties when these traditional holiday plants become available at Christmastime. The Paul Ecke Ranch test-markets its plants locally before selling millions of little slips to nurseries across the country, where they are grown to salable size. Thus residents in this region were the first to know about pink and salmon poinsettias in the late 1980s.

Each year, the ranch grows about 10,000 poinsettia seedlings, searches for interesting variations and develops those it believes will be winners. The prettiest of the latest crop includes Monet, with creamy bracts stippled in pink and peach, as if they had been carefully dabbed with a brush. (The colorful parts of a poinsettia are modified leaves called bracts; the flowers are the small, sticky leaves at the base of this brightly colored foliage). Parfait is another new variety that has alternating peach and pink bracts. The most surprising newcomer, Curly, has bracts that spiral like a pinwheel. Potted, it grows in peach or white; as a field-cultivated cut flower, in red. But don’t bother telling relatives in Boise or Boston about any of these novelties just yet. This holiday season, they’re available exclusively in our own back yard.