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into tne United States is credited to Joel Poinsett, a Southern plantation visiting Taxco, Mexico, he w$s impressed with a brilliant, red, flowering shrub he found blooming during December. He had some plants sent to this home in Greenville, SC. When they did well in his greenhouse, he distributed plants to his horticultural friends.
In 1902, Albert Ecke immigrated from Germany to Southern California. The Ecke family settled in Hollywood where they found poinsettias blooming wild on the hillsides. Fascinated by the bright-scarlet flowers, the Ecke family began to raise fields of poinsettias which they sold as fresh cut flowers for Christmas. The vast fleCds of poinsettias became an early Hollywood landmark as they attracted dozens of tourist buses driving by for a sight that would long be remembered.
Paul Ecke Sr. Developed - -»
It for Indoor Growing
In 1920, Paul Ecke, Sr. developed the first poinsettia cultivar that coqld be successfully grown as an indqpr potted plant. To introduce the plant to flower growers across the country, he made annual selling trips from coast to coast to coast starting in the early 1920s. For many years, he visited old customers and met new ones as he traveled by train. Eight years later, ijie American road system was developed enough so he could travel by automobile, sharing his vision of a new, living symbol of Christmas with anyone who would listen. *
Today the poinsettia is not tirfly the most popular Christmas plant, itjis also the number one flowering potted plant in the United States. Even with its traditional selling period ofjustilx weeks out or the year, in terms jpf wholesale value, the poinsettia' $r outdistances the second plage chrysanthemum and third place zonal geranium. „■ *
Dr. Diane Relf is a horticultitre specialist with Virginia Cooperative Extension and is a member of the faulty of Virginia Tech. s
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