Tag Archives: poinsettia

Finding hope

I was contemplating writing about poinsettias* as a Christmas topic that is not derived from our own garden. Though I am not sure that I have anything to say about poinsettias that I have not said before. My world has become so much smaller this year. But then I came across two minor incidents that seemed to capture hope.

Christmas this year seems especially poignant. While we, in our archipelago of five million, can lead close to normal lives, nothing, anywhere, is normal. Our degree of disruption is just less than so many other places and we can go about our day to day business without fear. Our hearts go out to those in other countries where life is so very difficult and spirits are low.  

My local town of Waitara is widely regarded as … fairly unprepossessing, shall I say? But two sights yesterday made me smile. Blink and you might miss the first one. It is in the bottom left of the photo.

Not a lonely little petunia in an onion patch but a brave, little, self-seeded petunia flowering in a sea of ashphalt and concrete right beside the gutter. The seed must have fallen from a hanging basket above. A tiny beacon of hope and survival, maybe.

Along came a woman with her hair wreathed in Christmas tinsel. I asked her if I might photograph her from behind, to preserve her anonymity. Though, upon reflection, you don’t go out adorned like that if you wish to remain anonymous. She turned so I could photograph the rear view and then told me I could photograph the front if I wished. Is she not both brave and beautiful?

May you find your own little harbingers of hope if Christmas is a difficult time for you this year.

Back to the topic of poinsettias

*Should you wish to know more about poinsettia, I can refer you to

1) The travesty that is the ‘cream’ poinsettia https://jury.co.nz/2015/01/23/plant-collector-the-cream-poinsettia/

2) cultural requirements for the poinsettia https://jury.co.nz/2014/12/12/garden-lore-friday-19-december-2014/

3) a note about the universality of the poinsettia – this time in China in a brief para and photo at the end of this piece: https://jury.co.nz/2016/05/17/postcards-of-china-4-rocks-improving-vehicles-and-plants-both-ubiquitous-and-not/

But I do not appear to have shared these photos of a splendid poinsettia flowering in front a friend’s house in New Plymouth in June this year. I think he told me it was just a house plant he had put into the garden where it grew and grew.

We do not have a poinsettia here in any shape or form, though I did once try planting out a Christmas houseplant whereupon it just became insignificant for reasons explained in the second link above. Had I been more patient, it may have ended up looking as exotic and large as our friend’s garden specimen.

It is a sign of different times that our Christmas presents this year are arriving with no festive wrapping. Our children, all living out of reach overseas, have resorted to remote shopping online and remote delivery. A minor sign of a Covid Christmas, even in safe New Zealand.

Garden Lore

“The word ha-ha comes from an Anglo-Saxon word which I believe is spelt haugh, but anyway is pronounced how and means a ditch…. I thought it was a silly Victorian word and was given this explanation by an amateur archaeologist who was also my mother-in-law. She was extremely knowledgeable about ditches, embankments and fortifications which she kept an eye on for the Department of Ancient Monuments, so I guess she was right.”

Personal letter from a Waikato Times reader in response to my recent post about a ha-ha.

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Garden Lore: The Christmas Poinsettia

Is there a container plant both more seasonal and disposable than the Christmas poinsettia? It is a Mexican euphorbia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, believe it or not, and the presentation of it as a colourful houseplant is through clever growing techniques. If you have ever tried planting one out in the garden after Christmas, you may have found that it soon became a somewhat leggy, scrubby plant without the brilliant colour and compact growth. It can reach maybe 4 metres in height and is a shrub.

The brilliant red appears in leaf bracts. The flower itself is an insignificant structure. It comes in other colours from white through green, orange and pink but the association with Christmas means that the reds are the most favoured. The growing requirements to get the leaf bracts to colour well are very specific and require a period of nights which are pitch black and days filled with bright light – about 12 hours of each, in fact. Given that this plant became associated with Christmas in the northern hemisphere a long time ago, the fact that we see so many plants offered for sale remarkably cheaply here in the southern hemisphere is because the crop is grown en masse in controlled conditions under cover. It is a uniformly high quality product, but it is also the most disposable of house plants. If you feel inclined to indulge in a spot of plant torture, they can apparently be turned into effective bonsais and if you are of a mind to do this, you will probably be inclined to attend to the darkness and light requirements as well.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted with their permission.