This is the time of year when we can find poinsettias and cyclamen galore in the nurseries and retail centers. These cheerful holiday bloomers will brighten up your holidays and bring color into your life through early spring, and sometimes even longer.
Poinsettias are perhaps the most traditional holiday plant. You’ll be able to select a poinsettia now in myriad colors for nearly every decorating need. But, what do you do after the holidays with these plants, because they keep going and going and going? The answer is: Enjoy them through Valentine’s Day or as long as you’d like. But when the poinsettia becomes leggy or you become tired of it, give yourself permission to discard it in the trash. It’s perfectly fine to consider poinsettias an annual with a limited life, even though they grow into trees and are wonderful shrubs in the dryer and hotter climates of Southern California, Mexico and Hawaii. Poinsettias will turn black and shrivel up if we put them outside in our soggy, chilly winters.
Poinsettias belong to the euphorbia family. The colored petals really are leaves and the true flowers are the green and yellow b-b shaped structures in the center of all the color. The first thing you’ll want to do when you bring your poinsettia home is to punch holes in the bottom of the decorative wrapper and/or remove the wrapper. These plants do not like to be soggy. They need to drain well. Water them regularly, allowing the top of the soil to dry out a wee bit. But if your plant wilts, you’ll know you waited a tiny bit too long. It usually will recover from its droopiness one or two times, but after that you’re pushing your luck.
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