Like Christmas trees, Santa and reindeer, the poinsettia has long been a ubiquitous symbol of the holiday season in the US and across Europe.
But now, nearly 200 years after the plant with the bright crimson leaves was introduced in the US, attention is once again turning to the poinsettia’s origins and the checkered history of its namesake.
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Where did the name poinsettia come from?
The name comes from the amateur botanist and statesman Joel Roberts Poinsett, who happened upon the plant in 1828 during his tenure as the first US minister to the newly independent Mexico.
Poinsett, who was interested in science as well as potential cash crops, sent clippings of the plant to his home in South Carolina and to a botanist in Philadelphia, who affixed the eponymous name to the plant in gratitude.
A life-size bronze statue of Poinsett still stands in his honour in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.
However, he was cast out of Mexico within a year of his discovery, having earned a local reputation for intrusive political manoeuvring that extended to a network of secretive masonic lodges and schemes to contain British influence.
Is the name losing its lustre?
As more people learn of its namesake’s complicated history, the name poinsettia has become less attractive in the United States.
Unvarnished published accounts reveal Poinsett as a disruptive advocate for business interests abroad, a slaveholder on a rice plantation in the US, and a secretary of war who helped oversee the forced removal of Native Americans, including the westward relocation of Cherokee populations to Oklahoma known as the “Trail of Tears”.
In a new biography titled Flowers, Guns and Money, historian Lindsay Schakenbach Regele describes the cosmopolitan Poinsett as a political and economic pragmatist who conspired with a Chilean independence leader and colluded with British bankers in Mexico. Though he was a slave owner, he opposed secession, and he didn’t live to see the Civil War.
Schakenbach Regele renders tough judgement on Poinsett’s treatment of and regard for Indigenous peoples.
“Because Poinsett belonged to learned societies, contributed to botanists’ collections, and purchased art from Europe, he could more readily justify the expulsion of Natives from their homes,” she writes.
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A Christmas flower of many names
The cultivation of the plant dates back to the Aztec empire in Mexico 500 years ago.
Among Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mexico, the plant is known as the cuetlaxochitl (kwet-la-SHO-sheet), meaning “flower that withers”. It’s an apt description of the thin red leaves on wild varieties of the plant that grow to heights above 10 feet (3 metres).
Year-end holiday markets in Latin America brim with the potted plant known in Spanish as the “flor de Nochebuena”, or “flower of Christmas Eve,” which is entwined with celebrations of the night before Christmas. The “Nochebuena” name is traced to early Franciscan friars who arrived from Spain in the 16th century. Spaniards once called it “scarlet cloth”.
Additional nicknames abound: “Santa Catarina” in Mexico, “estrella federal”, or “federal star” in Argentina and “penacho de Incan”, or “headdress” in Peru.
Ascribed in the 19th century, the Latin name, Euphorbia pulcherrima, means “the most beautiful” of a diverse genus with a milky sap of latex.
The Mexican roots of US poinsettias
Mexican biologists in recent years have traced the genetic stock of US poinsettia plants to a wild variant in the Pacific coastal state of Guerrero, verifying lore about Poinsett’s pivotal encounter there. The scientists also are researching a rich, untapped diversity of other wild variants, in efforts that may help guard against the poaching of plants and theft of genetic information.
The flower still grows wild along Mexico’s Pacific Coast and parts of Central America as far as Costa Rica.
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A lasting figure in history
Regardless of his troubled history, Poinsett’s legacy as an explorer and collector continues to loom large: Some 1,800 meticulously tended poinsettias are delivered in November and December from greenhouses in Maryland to a long list of museums in Washington, D.C., affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.
A “pink-champagne” cultivar adorns the National Portrait Gallery this year.
Poinsett’s name may also live on for his connection to other areas of US culture. He advocated for the establishment of a national science museum, and in part due to his efforts, a fortune bequeathed by British scientist James Smithson was used to underwrite the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.
