Toronto Star
Giving overexposed poinsettias their due: The Real Dirt
A staunch defender of poinsettias teaches Sonia Day new things about
Christmas plant we love to hate.
Toronto Star, December 20, 2014
By Sonia Day
Sonia Day / Special to the Star
Princettia SK 109 is a shocking pink new variety of poinsettias that Wayne Brown, head
research specialist at Jeffery Greenhouses, wants to turn into a fundraising plant for Breast
Cancer Week.
If you hate the Christmas plant, don’t tell Wayne Brown.
He’s acknowledged to be the grand pooh-bah of poinsettia-growing in Canada. (His two
American counterparts are based in North Carolina and California.) And even though he’s
been testing new varieties for over 15 years, he still hasn’t grown tired of how they look.
“Sure I have poinsettias in my home at Christmas. Always,” he says with a grin.
“About eight pots of them. I get home from work, turn on the lights and there they are. All
that colour in the living room, the bathroom . . . ”
His voice trails off as he proffers a pot of Prinsettia SK109 to prove his point. It’s a shocking
pink variety that’s currently undergoing trials at Jeffery’s Greenhouses in St. Catharines,
Ont., where Brown is head research specialist. (Watch for this eye-popper to debut in a year
or two, bearing a snazzy name that befits its extraordinary hue.)
The staunch defender of poinsettias also makes a good point about their brilliance. Whether
it’s red Christmas Day, or a breakaway kind called Orange Spice, or prettily-variegated Pink
and Cream or a multicoloured mixture of several shades, how colourful these plants look,
even under harsh fluorescent lighting at the supermarket.
In fact, I challenge jaded folks who dismiss poinsettias as “boring” to take a trip to the
annual Christmas Open House at Vineland Research Station in Niagara. (You’ve missed it
this time around, but check the website, vinelandresearch.com in fall 2015 for next year’s
date). That’s when new kinds of poinsettias — hundreds and hundreds of perfectly-groomed
specimens — are trotted out for growers and the general public to peer at and assess. And
seeing all that glorious colour amassed in the research station’s greenhouses on a grey,
wet-blanket of a day at the beginning of December is a truly heartwarming experience.
I was there this year to see and hear guru Brown show off varieties he’s currently nurturing.
Along the way, I picked up these facts about the seasonal plant that many of us love to
hate:
• About 140 varieties of poinsettias are raised in greenhouses worldwide as “Christmas
plants.”
• Tastes vary, country to country. Europeans are now hot for new pink varieties. Canadians
are more traditional, with perennial popular scarlet Christmas Day topping the list.
• Poinsettias we buy here all originate as tiny cuttings grown in Guatemala and Africa. Flown
to Canada under climate-controlled conditions, they must be planted within a couple of days
or they won’t survive.
• Poinsettias take about 12 to 16 weeks to reach saleable size in a standard six-inch pot.
• Every plant must play by the rules, growing exactly 15 to 17 inches across, with a nice
rounded shape (which requires constant pruning.) Stragglers and non-conformists get
tossed in the compost.
* Poinsettia specialists like Brown become experts at manipulating when the plants will
reach maturity. In fact, he has his eye on turning that fetching newcomer Prinsettia SK 109
into a fundraising plant for Breast Cancer Week in October.
“Look at that pink,” he says, fingering a leaf. “It would be perfect, wouldn’t it?”
In the meantime, a Merry Christmas to all.
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al_dirt.html