Cultivating Community

It’s Christmastime in California. You can tell by all the potted poinsettias popping up around grocery store doors. The holiday’s standard bloomer is actually a tropical plant that originated in Mexico and Guatemala. It was intro­duced to the United States by diplomat Joel Roberts Poinsett, appointed in 1825 as the first U.S. Envoy to Mexico. In addition to being a diplomat, Poinsett was also a physician and an
amateur botanist.
On a trip south of Mexico City, Poinsett saw the vibrant red and green plant known there as Flor de Nochebuena (Christmas Eve Flower). It dates back at least to the time of the Aztecs; they called it Cuetlaxochitl. Poinsett sent samples to the United States for classification and study. By 1836, the plant was known north of the border as the Poinsettia.
The bright red burst at the top of a poinsettia is actually a collection of leaves – not a flower. The flower is actually the tiny yellow bits at the center of the red burst of specialized “flower surrounder” leaves called bracts. (Scrabble fans, take note.)
That beautiful blast of bract color can vary; poinsettia bracts can be cream, pink, white or a marbled red and white that looks like a candy cane. They can also be orange or pale green.
Thanks to the plant’s popularity, they’re now a popular mid-winter holiday decoration in North America, South America, Europe and even Turkey and Egypt.
In the wild, poinsettias look more like a tree than a bush. You can still see decades-old poinsettias blooming against the south- or west-facing walls of Victorian houses across Southern California. They’ll reach five to eight feet easily, but they look more like a collection of bamboo stems with poinsettia leaves and a burst of color on top. In Mexico and Guatemala the native plants are annuals. Those are heirloom versions you can see planted next to those Victorian houses in California’s coastal “no freeze” climate zones.
The potted versions we’re buying right now behave more like perennials – a plant with a burst of color that lives one season. If you’ve ever tried to keep your poinsettia alive, you know they get reedy and scraggly and their lower leaves tend to shrivel up and drop. None of mine have ever made it to Easter.
A chat with a horticulture professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo made me feel much better about killing my poinsettias. (I love it when someone tells me my dead plants aren’t my fault.) The poinsettias we buy at the grocery store aren’t really meant to live forever. Commercial poinsettias are grown to be compact and bushy, and forced into a spectacular color-burst just in time for the holidays. They’re really meant to be one-season plants.
Plus, getting the uppermost bract of poinsettias to “color pop” in time for December requires a lot of work. During autumn, poinsettias require uninterrupted long, dark nights followed by bright sunny days to encourage them to develop colored bracts. To ensure the brightest color pop of the bracts, the plants need at least five straight nights of complete darkness for 12 hours, alternated with full sunshine. Any light – streetlights, TV lights, computer lights – during the dark periods wrecks the process and results in duller, less-vibrant colors in the bracts. (Science/Scrabble vocabulary bonus word: that process is called “photoperiodism.”)
If you love them, go ahead and buy them and keep the soil in the pots moist, but not wet. You can keep them outside on front porches where they’re sheltered from frost. They are tropical plants; bring them indoors when freezing temps are predicted or they’re toast.
You can try to keep yours alive after Christmas, and see how far you get.
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It’s raining! Hallelujah! There is one garden chore you can do this month for bigger blooms and veggies in 2017. Windsor Town Green Community Garden co-chair and Master Gardener Mary Mariani has this tip: “To promote the health of your soil during the winter months, add at least 1 inch of organic compost plus a layer of straw to the top of your garden bed when you ‘put your garden to sleep’ for the winter, This nurtures your soil and helps protect its living organisms so they are ready to help you in the spring.”
Good Soil = Good Gardens.
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Tired of digging in rooty hardpan full of that Windsor clay? Think about renting a raised, drip-irrigated bed in the Windsor Town Green Community Garden. Prices range from $15 to $60 depending on size. The Community Garden will be taking 2017 rental applications in January.
To find out more about the Windsor Garden Club, or the Town Green Community Garden, visit the WGC website at www.windsorgardenclub.org.
This column was written by Glenda Castelli, certified grower, grape grower and board member of the Windsor Garden Club.