Right after Thanksgiving, I purchased two large blooming poinsettia plants from Costco. One wilted and died several weeks ago. Yesterday, after tiring of the reminder of Christmas past, I cut the remaining flowers from the plant and put them into water. After the stems were cut, it was necessary to burn the end of the stem to open the water passages to the plant. When cut, the plant secretes a white liquid which gums up the water delivery system. Burning the stem opens these passages. These flowers, actually leaves, will last for several more weeks.
The poinsettia plant is a native of Mexico and was brought to this country by the US Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Robert Poinsett in 1826.
Beautiful!
2nd stem of amaryllis blooms
Pasadena
There are still no leaves on this amaryllis plant. It has been interesting to observe it progress through its life cycle. It sits on our island and receives a quarter turn each day to keep it nice and straight. It wants to turn its head to the sun.
I had a similar lily in my yard in California. Each spring it sent up numerous stems of pink flowers. No leaves appeared until the flowers had all died and then the leaves appeared and lasted until they died back in the fall. The common name for this bulb was Naked Lady.
Great horticulture information. I just took my Costco plants and dumped them into the garbage. I was tired of Christmas!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information about the poinsettias. I was about to toss the one by the front door, a Mexican one with smaller flowers that was beautiful in its prime, but I just cut off the blooms that were still wonderful, burned the ends, and now they make up a beautiful bouquet!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Linda
PS. Please advise me how to "publish" this with my name. Still no clue.