Christmas is celebrated around the world, but it clearly leans into cold weather.
Santa lives at the North Pole, after all. Among the most common holiday imagery are snow-covered evergreens, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose.
But it doesn’t take a lot of sleuthing on the Internet to find a stock image of Santa unwinding after a globe-trotting Christmas Eve. He’s lounging in a beach chair, his red pant legs rolled up, his bare feet in sand. Often, there’s a colorful drink in his hand, a turquoise-blue body of water nearby.
It is the season of believing, after all. But if a sun-soaking Santa seems far-fetched to you, here’s a warm weather connection to Christmas that you don’t have to take on faith.
It’s a fact that the poinsettia – the official plant of Christmas – is native to Mexico. It’s a tropical plant that finds its comfort zone between 65 to 70 degrees during the day.
Despite having only a six-week selling season, poinsettias are America’s No. 1 potted plant, racking up sales of $250 million each year, according to the Future Farmers of America organization.
The plant takes its name from Joel Roberts Poinsett, a native of South Carolina who is credited with bringing the poinsettia to the United States while he was serving as the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
Red poinsettias remain the most popular, but they come in more than 100 varieties, “including shades of white, cream, pink, purple, orange and yellow,” FFA noted. Poinsettias are grown in all 50 states.
The colorful part of the plant is a modified leaf called a bract, which often is mistaken as the flower. You must look in the center of the bracts for the small yellow flowers, known as cyathium.
No matter the size or the color of your poinsettia, you’ll want to take these steps to make it last long.
- Average room temperature is fine. Poinsettias can’t tolerate cold (including icy water) and can suffer from droopy leaves (a condition known as epinasty) if exposed to cold temperatures.
- Epinasty also can result from a build-up of ethylene gas. Big-box retailers are notorious for leaving poinsettias in plastic sleeves, which trap ethylene and essentially ruin the plant.
- Bright, ample light is best for the plant, mimicking conditions in Mexico.
- Keep the plant moist but not sitting in water. Like people, poinsettias don’t like wet feet. The frequency and amount of water will vary depending upon the amount of sunlight, humidity and pot size to which the plant is exposed.
- Poinsettias are sensitive plants, so you want to avoid banging them into things as they can bruise easily.
Not only are poinsettias a prominent part of Christmas, but they are the subject of their own holiday.
National Poinsettia Day, celebrated on Dec. 12, marks the anniversary of the day that Joel Roberts Poinsett died in 1851.