Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren Volbom Here. The poinsettia is the plant equivalent of
Speaker 1: Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You. You
Speaker 1: perhaps don't even remember it exists until the first day
Speaker 1: you walk into a store in November, and suddenly it
Speaker 1: is the holiday season. You're positively bombarded with it until January,
Speaker 1: at which point both disappear again for another ten months,
Speaker 1: making you wonder what they get up to while they're
Speaker 1: laying in wait. But just like Mariah's popular Christmas bop,
Speaker 1: point setias are economically important. They're the highest selling potted
Speaker 1: plant in the world during the holiday shopping season the
Speaker 1: six weeks leading up to Christmas. Some seventy million point
Speaker 1: setia is worth some two hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: are sold in the United States alone, and they're about
Speaker 1: twice as popular in Europe. Point Setias were cultivated by
Speaker 1: peoples within the Triple Alliance of what's now Central Mexico.
Speaker 1: That is, the empire of three main city states now
Speaker 1: often called the Aztec Empire, though that name was applied
Speaker 1: retroactively and a little confusingly. The flowers didn't actually grow
Speaker 1: in the capital city of pinoch Titlan and now Mexico City,
Speaker 1: but reportedly Triple Alliance rulers imported thousands of plants every
Speaker 1: winter from warmer lower elevations for use as an ornamental,
Speaker 1: and also used different extracts from the plant as medicine
Speaker 1: and as a reddish purple fabric dye. In these centuries
Speaker 1: since it's been called the lobster flower, the flame leaf flower,
Speaker 1: the Star of Love, and the flower of the Holy Night.
Speaker 1: A butt Poinsettia is probably the weirdest name of all,
Speaker 1: because it's just a shout out to the American diplomat
Speaker 1: who's credited with being the first to bring them back
Speaker 1: to the US from Mexico in the eighteen hundreds. Joel
Speaker 1: Roberts Pointset was the first US minister to Mexico, and
Speaker 1: as an amateur botanist, is said to have sent some
Speaker 1: cuttings back to his home in South Carolina from southern
Speaker 1: Mexican go in eighteen twenty eight. Though there's no irrefutable
Speaker 1: proof of this, what is known is that the plant
Speaker 1: was on display in Philadelphia in eighteen twenty nine. Associated
Speaker 1: with Poinsett's name, it was an immediate hit and was
Speaker 1: henceforth known as the poinsettia in the English speaking United
Speaker 1: States and parts of Europe. A note that pointsett was
Speaker 1: not well liked in Mexico. The term points at tismo
Speaker 1: is sometimes still used there today to describe an arrogant
Speaker 1: person who oversteps their authority at any rate. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, the Eki family of southern California started farming poinsettias,
Speaker 1: and they tirelessly pushed them as a symbol of the
Speaker 1: Christmas season. Today, around seventy percent of the point Setia
Speaker 1: plants you buy in the United States come from the
Speaker 1: Eki ranch, and point Setia care is their lifeblood, although
Speaker 1: many of us only encounter these plants in a potted
Speaker 1: and possibly disposable form in December of Poinsettias are a
Speaker 1: perennial winter flowering shrub with milky sap and branches so
Speaker 1: long that they sometimes look like vines. In the mid
Speaker 1: elevation regions of Mexico and Central America where they're from,
Speaker 1: or gardens where they're successfully grown, they can reach over
Speaker 1: ten feet or three meters tall and will die down
Speaker 1: but come back every year. The big, showy red or
Speaker 1: white or pink flowers that we're used to seeing aren't
Speaker 1: actually the poinsettia's flowers at all, but modified leaves called bracts.
Speaker 1: The actual flowers are those small yellow buds in the
Speaker 1: middle of the colorful bracts. When you buy a poinsettia
Speaker 1: in a store, it already comes sporting its brightly colored,
Speaker 1: fancy bracts, and you might have no idea how hard
Speaker 1: it was to get them there. One Fritz Bar, the
Speaker 1: author of the nineteen thirty seven guide Fritz Bar's Commercial Floriculture,
Speaker 1: A Practical Manual for the Retail Grower, describe the delicate
Speaker 1: and finicky poinsettia thus sleep. Perhaps no other plant or
Speaker 1: flower we handle during Christmas week is more short lived,
Speaker 1: Wilt's quicker, or it is more disappointing to those who
Speaker 1: are it. Yet when the next Christmas comes around, there
Speaker 1: comes again the same demand for poinsettias, and the disappointments
Speaker 1: of a year ago are all forgotten. Over time, floor
Speaker 1: culturists overcame some of these problems, but until the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, growing poinsettias and getting them into the hands
Speaker 1: of holiday revelers in relatively good shape was a real trick.
Speaker 1: That was until somebody realized the poinsettias need just one
Speaker 1: thing to turn their green bracts red, pink, or white,
Speaker 1: total darkness. In order to induce your poinsettia plant to
Speaker 1: create flower buds and to change the color of its
Speaker 1: leaves from green in time for Christmas, it must be
Speaker 1: kept in complete darkness for sixteen hours a day. The
Speaker 1: withholding of light prevents the plant from producing chlorophyll, which
Speaker 1: is what makes plant parts green. This lets the bracts
Speaker 1: change to whatever shade of red, pink, white, or orange
Speaker 1: they develop, depending on the variety of the poinsettia, and
Speaker 1: there are about one hundred types grown in the US.
Speaker 1: In order to make that happen, you need to subject
Speaker 1: your plant to about two months of sixteen hours of
Speaker 1: uninterrupted darkness per day, alternated with eight hours of bright light. Oh,
Speaker 1: which means that if you were looking for those bright
Speaker 1: colors this holiday season and you're listening to this episode
Speaker 1: as it comes out, you're out of luck, though you
Speaker 1: might be just in time for a showy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: To achieve bright December foliage start somewhere around September twenty first,
Speaker 1: right around the fall equinox. Pull your point setia out
Speaker 1: of its sunny window after eight hours and move it
Speaker 1: into sixteen hours of uninterrupted darkness like put it under
Speaker 1: a box if necessary. During the dark period, the plant
Speaker 1: cannot receive even the slightest bit of light at any time.
Speaker 1: You can just continue this around Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, keep
Speaker 1: your point stetia in bright light or the full sun
Speaker 1: of a sunny window, not keeping the potting soil moist
Speaker 1: or adding excess water, but watering it when the soil
Speaker 1: is dry to the touch. Point setias prefer temperatures around
Speaker 1: or above sixty five degrees fahrenheit that's about eighteen degrees
Speaker 1: celsius boom from December until about April. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's a good idea to cut your pointetia down to
Speaker 1: a three to two eight inch stem that's about eight
Speaker 1: to twenty centimeters and let it regrow, treating it normally
Speaker 1: until the next year. But wait, are these plants poisonous?
Speaker 1: One common urban legend about point cetias is that they're
Speaker 1: toxic to people and animals. However, this seems to stem
Speaker 1: from a single unfounded story that starts circulating around nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some crossover with stories about easter lilies, which
Speaker 1: are in fact very toxic to cats. In the Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: exhaustive studies have found that all parts of the poinsettia
Speaker 1: are safe for incidental exposure. A one study showed that
Speaker 1: a fifty pound or twenty five kilo child would have
Speaker 1: to eat over one pound or half a kilo of
Speaker 1: poinsettia leaves between five hundred and six hundred leaves the
Speaker 1: toxicity to become a problem. However, they don't taste very good,
Speaker 1: and the child who ate them would probably get a
Speaker 1: tummy ache long before they were poisoned. However, there is
Speaker 1: an exception here. Pointsettias contain a milky sap that can
Speaker 1: set off a latex allergy in people with severe latex sensitivities.
Speaker 1: Just being in the same room with the point Cetia
Speaker 1: plant might set off a rash or other symptoms, though
Speaker 1: case reports have shown that these will resolve after normal
Speaker 1: treatment with antihistamines. Be safe out there and enjoy your
Speaker 1: bract based holiday decorations responsibly. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article Poinsettia, the Mexican Christmas flower that blooms in
Speaker 1: the dark on HowStuffWorks dot Com written by Jesslyn Shields.
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