URBANA — When it comes to the most popular holiday plant, the winner is astonishing. With their various shades of cheery hues, poinsettias are the most effective-offering potted plant in the United States and Canada.
There are a lot more than 100 kinds of poinsettia, from the regular purple vegetation to pink, white, yellow, and purple. If taken treatment of effectively, their shiny displays can final for various weeks, suggests Ken Johnson, College of Illinois Extension horticulture educator.
“The colored pieces of the vegetation aren’t flowers,” Johnson claims. “They are essentially modified leaves referred to as bracts.”
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The greenish-yellow bouquets, cyathia, are in the heart of the bracts. Poinsettias will drop their bracts and leaves after their bouquets have drop all their pollen. So, for long-long lasting poinsettias, pick vegetation that have minor or no pollen exhibiting in their flowers.
Just one of the most lengthy-standing myths about poinsettias is its toxicity.
“Contrary to well-known belief, poinsettias are not toxic,” Johnson says. “The misconception commenced in 1919, when a little one allegedly died soon after eating a poinsettia leaf.”
Although this was in no way proved and was later on established to be rumour, the story has persisted. In reality, a study by Ohio Condition University showed that a 50-pound youngster would have to take in extra than 1 1/4 lbs of the plant, 500 to 600 leaves, to have any dangerous outcomes.