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The first of the season’s poinsettias shipped Tuesday from the Laval greenhouses of Quebec’s biggest producer — and, before long, pots of the brightly coloured tropical plants synonymous with Christmas will be in stores and holiday displays everywhere. It’s that time of year.
Inside a sprawling greenhouse at La Ferme Grover in Ste-Dorothée one sunny afternoon, a carpet of bright red stretched out as far as the eye could see. The temperature was a balmy 18 degrees, the humidity 40 per cent. Here and in other Grover greenhouses, nearly 300,000 potted poinsettias have been watered and fed for months. Those that are ready are being packed and loaded onto trucks destined for Quebec big-box stores including Provigo, Maxi, Home Depot and counterparts in Ontario — and the rest will follow in the weeks ahead.
The poinsettia (botanical name Euphorbia pulcherrima) is a perennial flowering shrub native to Mexico; in its natural habitat it can grow to three metres or taller. It blooms in November and December as the days grow shorter and the nights lengthen. What most people think of as its flowers are, in fact, modified leaves called bracts. The poinsettia’s true flowers are an unassuming cluster of yellowish orbs at the base of the bracts.
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The plant owes its English name to Joel Roberts Poinsett, United States ambassador to Mexico from 1825 to 1829. An avid amateur botanist, he saw euphorbias with red bracts growing wild in the hills around Taxco and had samples sent to his South Carolina home. There he propagated them in his greenhouses and gave them to friends and botanical gardens.
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In Mexico the poinsettia is known as flor de nochebuena, or flower of the holy night. For some, the configuration of its bracts evokes the symbol of the Star of Bethlehem, which led the Wise Men to Jesus.
As legend has it, a Mexican girl was walking to church on Christmas Eve, sad that she was too poor to have gifts for the Christ child. Her cousin consoled her by saying that even the most humble gift, if given with love, was fine. She gathered a handful of leaves from a shrub, entered the church and set down her bouquet: It turned a brilliant red. Since then, according to legend, wild poinsettias have turned red for Christmas.
Plant breeders have worked to produce hardier and more long-lasting poinsettia cultivars and today there is more variety than ever in bract colour and shape. Amid the sea of red in the 500,000-square-foot greenhouse we visited at La Ferme Grover were small pockets of plants with paler-toned bracts: rose, creamy green, marbled pink and green – and a pretty red-green mix known as “glitter.”
But for many consumers, the only acceptable colour for poinsettias red, which is why 90 per cent of those grown at La Ferme Grover are red.
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The plants were started from tiny green cuttings from Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico planted in mid-June in a small amount of soil. During the second week of August, they were transplanted into the 6-inch, 8-inch or 10-inch pots in which they remain. As they grew, temperatures, watering and fertilizing were tightly controlled to maximize the chances that they would develop into plants consumers wanted: full and round, with large and colourful bracts.
Three different cultivars — plant varieties — that develop at different rates are used to spread out the shipments, explained Guillaume Grover, director of production at La Ferme Grover. The late cultivars will ship between Dec. 15 and 20.
Grover and two of his four siblings are involved in the family-owned and family-run business, which their parents, Edith Frigon and Jean-Claude Grover, established nearly 40 years ago. They have been growing poinsettias since 2003; today the plants make up 10 per cent of their business.
Among their employees are seasonal workers from Guatemala and Mexico; of the five at work the day we visited, trimming dried and dead leaves from plants, most have returned every year for more than a decade. In working with them, the Grovers have learned Spanish.
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If growing poinsettias is a big job, so is packing, routing and shipping them. Eight to 10 trucks start at 5 a.m. and make deliveries to 250 retail points every week, Grover said. And as soon as this year’s shipping is finished, planning for next year’s plants begins.
Beyond the poinsettias themselves, other factors have an impact on the profitability of a season. One is temperature. “If it’s too cold, people are afraid to buy the plants and take them home,” Grover said.
Another is snow. “If there is no snow, people are not in the spirit.”
Assuming that people will, indeed, be taken by the Christmas spirit, consumers need to know how to choose and care for their poinsettias. The colour of a well cared for plant can last up to four months before fading.
Look for vigorous-looking bracts and green or red-tipped true flowers, said biologist Marie-France Larochelle of the public programs and education division of Montreal’s Botanical Garden.
Don’t choose plants that are crowded together or displayed in plastic or paper sleeves.
Poinsettias don’t tolerate temperatures cooler than 10 degrees Celsius. “So it’s very important not to buy a poinsettia and then leave it in a cold car while you do your other errands,” Larochelle said.
Poinsettias like well-lit rooms, but not direct sunlight. They like to be dry before being watered, but not too dry. And don’t overwater.
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