Every year during the Christmas season and while growing up in the Barrio El Azteca in the 1940s and 1950s, Mamá would obtain many plants that she called flores de Noche Buena to decorate her little altar to her beloved virgencita – Our Lady of Guadalupe. This annual event became a family tradition.
The nuns at St. Augustine School referred to this plant as Poinsettias. I had learned a new nomenclature for Mamá’s favorite plant. At that point, I was just content to know the English term. Many years later, I would learn far more about this beautiful plant.
The word, “poinsettia,” did not reappear in my consciousness until the fall of 1969, when as a graduate student at St. Mary’s University, I took a course with Dr. Hubert J. Miller on the history of Mexico and the Caribbean.
I learned that in 1825, President John Quincy Adams appointed Joel Roberts Poinsett as the first United States Minister (Ambassador) to Mexico, a diplomatic post he held until 1829. Joel Robert Poinsett was forty-six years old and had experience as a politician, a statesman and a diplomat in South America. He was well educated and spoke Spanish and four other languages.
Mexico had achieved its independence from Spain four years earlier and President Guadalupe Victoria needed much useful advice and guidance. President Adams had sent Mr. Poinsett to Mexico with specific instructions to help the fledgling nation.
Mr. Poinsett was an accomplished amateur botanist, and one day, he visited a colonial town south of Mexico City known as Taxco de Alarcón in the Mexican state of Guerrero. It was here, during the month of December, that he saw the beautiful red leaves of the flor de Noche Buena and fell in love with it.
He was so attracted by the colorful leaves that he sent them to his family farm in South Carolina, to his friends, and to botanical gardens. By 1836, seven years after Joel Roberts Poinsett left Mexico, the plant had become very popular in the United States and Europe.
During this same year, the Scottish botanist, Robert Graham, classified the plant as a new species and named it Poinsettia in honor of Joel Roberts Poinsett for introducing it to the U.S.
Wow! Very cool indeed! Thanks for sharing. This brought back memories of my Grandmom decorating the parish church altar during Christmas holidays. It also brought back memories of my LJC Botany classes with Mr. Claudio Perez. We learned that the bright red portions of this decorative plant are “bracts” (leaves colorized by genetics and environment). The real flowers are the tiny yellow parts (scianths) in the middle of the clustered bracts. I believe in the wild (west-facing mountain slopes from Guerrero down to Guatemala) they most likely are pollinated by some kind of wasps. The bracts can also be yellow, white, marbled grayish white, or light green.
PS: Though NOT poisonous, they can induce nausea and vomiting if ingested or asthma ends rhinitis in sensitive humans.
This plant was described by Humboldt in Europe in the early 1800s. They called it the FMexican Fire Flower” before economists named it after Minister Poinsett, who was a botanist as well as a diplomat.
I remember poinsettias in full bloom in Lime, Perú in June, 1980. The seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere.
PS: Though NOT poisonous, they can induce nausea and vomiting if ingested or asthma ends rhinitis in sensitive humans.
This plant was described by Humboldt in Europe in the early 1800s. They called it the FMexican Fire Flower” before economists named it after Minister Poinsett, who was a botanist as well as a diplomat.
I remember poinsettias in full bloom in Lime, Perú in June, 1980. The seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere.
Ooops! “Mexican Fire Flower”
This article was written by J. Gilberto Quezada
J. Gilberto Quezada and his wife Jo Emma live in San Antonio, Texas. He is a retired educator and an author, writer, essayist, and poet. Quezada is the author of the award-winning political biography, Border Boss: Manuel B. Bravo and Zapata County, published by Texas A&M University Press. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Catholic Southwest, A Journal of History and Culture.