Poinsettias are a really beautiful plant, but why are they so popular to decorate with at Christmas time? Besides the obvious fact that they are Christmas colors, red and green.
The poinsettia story all goes back to plant’s native Mexico, where legend has it a little girl left some seeds from a weed as a gift for a baby Jesus that was in a nativity scene. In the time after the seeds miraculously turned into the gorgeous flower we now know as a poinsettia.
In the 19th-century the U.S. ambassador to Mexico at the time was Joel Roberts Poinsett. He brought the plants with him back to the States. That’s how the plant became the official Christmas flower and it was named after him “poinsettias”.
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