2023-12-27 11:46:00
In December, my mother coddled poinsettias among the houseplants on her windowsills. I associate those plants with Christmas and I am not unique in that, because the Dutch name for poinsettia is poinsettia. It’s that green plant with red leaves at the top.
The poinsettia is often mistakenly called the Christmas rose. That is also a winter bloomer. In addition to appearance, the species differ in one important respect: you can hardly smell the Christmas rose without sneezing. The plant is also called hellebore.
You can sniff a poinsettia without sneezing. But there isn’t much to smell. The red leaves are not part of the flowers, but so-called bracts. Bracts are usually small and are located around or just below the flowers. That is also the case here, but the bracts are large and the flowers are small. Those flowers are yellow.
My mother was certainly not a Latinist, but she still liked to use scientific Latin names for houseplants. Nowadays she would poinsettia can be canceled, because the plant owes that name to the first American ambassador to Mexico since 1836: Joel Roberts Poinsett. He introduced the plants to the States. In addition to being an ambassador, he was also a botanist, physician and slave driver. I doubt whether my mother would have been awake because of a cancellation.
By the way, the Latin name is not poinsettia, but The most beautiful Euphorbia, which means beautiful spurge. The plant was given that name by German botanists following Alexander von Humboldt brought specimens home from Mexico. Poinsettia is a Latin nickname.
In Mexico, the poinsettia is a forest plant that can grow up to four meters high. The species becomes scarcer as more forests are cleared. In the Netherlands, the green-red plants come from greenhouses. They are kept small, sometimes so small that they can serve as Christmas decorations. Where do they actually stay following Christmas?
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
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