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The Botany of Poinsettias:
Unlike most flowers, the colorful display of a poinsettia (Euphorbio pulcherrima) is not supplied by petals, but by modified leaves called bracts. The small yellow structures at the center of the bracts are the flowers.
The plant's common name refers to Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. Minister to Mexico, who sent seeds and samples of the plants back to the United States in the late 1820s.
The poinsettia is native to the deciduous tropical forest of the Pacific coast of lower Mexico. There it is a large, lanky shrub reaching up to 30 feet in height, where it blooms in late fall after the end of the rainy season. |