Poinsettias Have Growers in Ohio Seeing Plenty of Green

The poinsettia, sold only during the six-week Christmas holiday season, has become the best-selling potted plant in the United States all year-round.

The poinsettia surpassed the chrysanthemum recently as the most-sold potted plant, according to the Poinsettia Growers Assn. Growers estimated that about 56 million plants will be sold nationwide by the end of the holiday season.

Part of the sales growth is attributed to indoor cultivation, which allows the tropical plant to be grown commercially in cold winter places like Ohio, where Christmases are sometimes white.

“The poinsettia is the traditional living symbol of the Christmas holiday season,” one grower noted.

Ohio greenhouses sold 4.3 million of the potted plants in 1993, contributing $16.2 million to the state’s economy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported. That makes Ohio the No. 3 state for poinsettia growing, with California the leader and North Carolina No. 2.

The Ohio growers trace their roots to California, where 90% of all the flowering poinsettia plants in the world get their start.

Californian Paul Ecke Jr., whose father pioneered indoor cultivation of poinsettias, traveled to Ohio in the 1940s and started a poinsettia business after studying at Ohio State University. The greenhouse is now headed by Paul Ecke III.

The “Eckespoint Monet” is the newest Ecke variety--a cream-colored poinsettia with dark red freckles.

Other varieties are red with pink speckles or yellow, but red remains the most popular, Ecke said. A poinsettia’s color is actually in its “bracts,” which are modified leaves; its small flower is in the center of the bracts.

“The flowers have to remain intact for the ultimate purchaser,” said Springfield, Ohio, grower Jeff Ulery. “The varieties we grow today are long-lasting and give the customer good value. I’ve had poinsettia plants on my own coffee table that lasted past Valentine’s Day.”

The native Mexican plant is named for Joel Roberts Poinsett, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1825 to 1829, who is credited with introducing poinsettias to the United States.

According to Mexican legend, poinsettias were once just colorless weeds, but when a young girl picked a bouquet of them for a Christmas Eve church service, they burst into brilliant red as she presented them to the Christ child.