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FeedPoinsettia Pageantry
There’s much to learn about the plant synonymous with Christmas
By Meleah Maynard
Photo by John Abernathy
Geyen, Bachman’s director of production, has been growing poinsettias for the Minneapolis-based garden center for more than two decades. Like company president Dale Bachman, he followed in the footsteps of his father, who worked as a grower for Bachman’s for 30 years. But it was Lloyd Bachman, a cousin of Dale’s dad, who taught Geyen how to care for the tropical beauties—to monitor the poinsettias closely by walking the aisles of the Farmington greenhouse several times a day, checking that the temperature and moisture are just right and that pests and diseases are kept at bay.
There is good reason for all of this fuss. Though they are sought after only about two months out of the year, poinsettias are Bachman’s biggest-selling flowering potted plant. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reported that poinsettias are the top selling potted, flowering plant in the country. More than $242 million worth were purchased in 2005, a slight drop from the previous year’s total.
This holiday season Geyen and his staff will pot up about 85,000 poinsettias, the best of the crop he has looked after since June. Three-quarters of those will be sold at Bachman’s 19 metro-area retail locations. The rest will fill orders placed by churches, malls, organizations holding holiday fundraisers, and commercial accounts.
“We’ve never had anything bad happen that meant, ‘Well, we won’t be having poinsettias this year for Christmas,’ ” says Geyen. “But it’s always a relief when they’re out of the greenhouse for the season. It’s one of the most stress-producing crops I watch over.”
Photo by John Abernathy
Looking back
The poinsettia’s popularity no doubt lies in its seemingly synonymous relationship to the holiday season. But the equation: poinsettias = Christmas hasn’t always been so. The connection was forged by a determined marketer in the 1920s.
Photo by John Abernathy
The story goes like this: The poinsettia is native to Mexico and Central America, where it grew, weed-like, to gangly heights of 10 feet or more before blooming for a short time in the winter. The Aztecs regarded its blood-red bracts, the colored leaves that most people think of as flowers, as representative of new lives given to warriors who died in battle. From the milky sap found inside the stem, they made medicine to treat fevers and cure skin infections. The red leaves were crushed to make dyes for textiles and cosmetics.
It was Joel Roberts Poinsett, amateur botanist and U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1825 to 1830, who introduced the poinsettia to this country when he sent a few plants back to his home in South Carolina. Soon poinsettias were thriving in other places with favorable climates, such as California.
Because the poinsettia’s brilliant red blooms appeared naturally in early winter, California agricultural entrepreneur Albert Ecke and his son, Paul, decided to try growing and marketing the plant indoors, as a holiday flower, in the 1920s. They set up roadside stands in Hollywood and Beverly Hills and eventually took their marketing message nationwide—even setting up product placements in the 1960s.
Today, the Paul Ecke Ranch, in Encinitas, California, is the largest breeder of poinsettias in the world. The operation is also the largest supplier of poinsettia cuttings to commercial growers in the United States. Growers such as Bachman’s Geyen start poinsettias from cuttings rather than seeds to ensure that the offspring look exactly like their parents. The local company orders more than half of the 140,000 cuttings they need each year from the Paul Ecke Ranch.
It was Dale Bachman’s grandfather, Albert, who began selling poinsettias at the garden center. In addition to sharing a professional relationship, he and Paul Ecke, Sr., were close friends. Both men understood the other’s passion for flowers. This fascination, says Dale Bachman, made the family business what it is today. “My great-grandfather, Henry Bachman, Sr., grew and sold vegetables when he started the business in 1885. He had five sons, and only Albert wanted to try growing flowers. He finally convinced everyone to let him try flowers in one greenhouse. It wasn’t long before those flowers were bringing in more money than all the vegetables combined.”
By the end of the 1920s, Bachman’s phased out vegetables in favor of flowers, and the first Bachman’s retail store opened on Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis. Before long, Ecke came around with his poinsettias. “We weren’t the only garden center to offer poinsettias,” says Bachman, who estimates the garden center first began selling the plants for the holidays around 1940. “But they hadn’t really taken off yet, either. I’m sure my grandfather saw the beauty of poinsettias and the potential they had and wanted to give them a try.”
In those days, Ecke would send the Bachmans dormant, field-grown plants in early June. The local retailer would grow those specimens in a greenhouse, then use cuttings to produce their crop.
Photo by John Abernathy
Variety is the spice
The popularity of poinsettias got a dramatic boost in the 1960s when breeding programs were launched by the USDA and a few private companies, including Paul Ecke Ranch. “What has come from these first efforts to the hybrids of today is nothing short of fantastic,” says Jack Williams, international product manager at Paul Ecke Ranch. “The plants grown and sold now are far stronger and last longer than anything in the past. Without these programs, this crop would probably never have reached the level of distribution or importance in the market it holds today.”
Photo by John Abernathy
Breeding programs have produced plants well beyond the traditional red—today’s varieties have blooms of white, cream, pink, maroon, salmon, and marbled blends. Green leaves beneath the blooming bracts are now light or dark, depending on the variety, and both blooming and green leaves can be large or small, smooth or pillowy.
Of the 160 different varieties now available commercially, Bachman’s will offer 40 this season that have proven themselves long-lived and popular with customers. “Not surprisingly, red is still the most popular color,” says Dale. Some of the most beloved varieties include ‘Prestige Red’, ‘Max Red’, ‘Cortez Red’, and ‘Winter Rose’. White is the second-most prized color with crowd-pleasers like ‘Sonora White’ and ‘Whitestar’ at the top of the list.
Then there are a few adventurous souls who depart from holiday palette all together, opting instead for novelty colors such as orange, purple, and blue. These Fantasy Colors, as they are called, are created by applying spray-on dyes to white, cream, and other light-colored poinsettias.
“People tend to stick to red when they’re buying a poinsettia for someone else,” says Bachman. “But when they’re buying for themselves, they’re more open to colors they like or something that matches their décor. There’s really something for everyone now, and people want poinsettias for the holidays. Because nothing says Christmas like a poinsettia does.”
Meleah Maynard is a Minneapolis freelance writer and Master Gardener.
For more information on resources featured in this story, please refer to our Buyer's Guide.
Poinsettia Pointers
- They are not poisonous, though the milky sap inside the stem can cause skin irritation for some people.- Poinsettias will do best if kept in indirect light rather than a bright
window.
- Poinsettias can be kept for re-blooming the following season, but most people don’t have the patience to replicate the precise growing conditions, and the blooms will never look as good as they did the first year.
- Provide good drainage for a longer lasting plant.
- Keep the plant away from hot or cold drafts, such as by a door that will be opened a lot.
—M.M.
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