Or purple. Or yellow. That’s what’s on offer from the most unusual colored poinsettias – blue, purple, yellow, orange, candy pink, etc., with or without sparkle – on the market this year. Indeed, alongside the traditional red poinsettias, as well as the pink, white and bicolored ones produced by hybridization, there’s a range of poinsettias colored… by the human hand.
These poinsettias are in fact white poinsettias dyed with an ethanol-based product called “Fantasy Colors”. The dye is guaranteed not to damage the plant’s health, so the bracts will last for several months: until spring at least.
The color is so unusual that I had to touch the flowers the first time I saw them. I thought they were plastic! But no, they had the same texture as real poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima).
A Year-Round Market
But will blue and purple poinsettias sell well? No question: they’re selling like hotcakes. So much so that, when these plants were launched in small quantities, some dealers said they hadn’t had time to unpack them before they were gone. Poinsettias generally arrive in the region around the beginning of December. If you want to buy one, call your favorite dealer and ask for a supply. Or at least ask when they’ll be delivered, so you can choose for yourself.
In fact, the company that sells the “Fantasy Colors” dye, the Fred C. Gloeckner Company of Harrison, New York, is aiming well beyond Christmas. Andrew Lee, manager of the company’s New Products Department, says that 30,000 orange-dyed poinsettias were sold on Halloween… in just one New York store! He’s thinking of offering green poinsettias for St. Patrick’s Day, printing hearts on the bracts for Valentine’s Day, and even offering patriotic Americans blue, white and red poinsettias for July 4th!
What’s more, the company contracts with greenhouses across the USA and Canada to offer a whole range of other colors for the summer garden. Because poinsettia can be treated as an annual and thus grown outdoors in summer. “With a flowering time of 6 months or more, they’ll bloom from June until frost in your climate.”
Out-of-Season Flowering
But the poinsettia naturally blooms at Christmas: how can you have flowering plants in other seasons? It’s so easy! The poinsettia blooms on short days. By extending the length of the day in autumn and winter to 12 hours or more using horticultural lamps, you can anticipate flowering that would normally have taken place in late autumn. Then, 2 to 3 months before you want them to flower, you need to protect them from the sun for part of the day, to give a total of less than 12 hours of light per day. This is easily done in a greenhouse, using timer-controlled shade cloths. This makes it possible to create “nocturnal” conditions from late afternoon onwards.
Colors That Shine
It’s also the Fred C. Gloeckner Company that sells the “glitter” you’ll see on poinsettias this winter, both classic red poinsettias and colored poinsettias. The product is called “Gloeckner Clear Glue & Glitter” and is a plant-friendly glue that can be sprayed onto bracts and leaves. The set also includes small metallic glitters which can then be applied to the treated parts. The glitter is suitable for both dyed and red, pink, white and other poinsettias, giving the plants an attractive, sparkling effect.
Yellow Poinsettias for Christmas?
Mr. Lee says blues and purples sell very well this time of year. “Blue is very fashionable for Christmas decorations. A blue poinsettia will be perfect for such a setting.” Surprisingly, yellow and orange poinsettias also sold well in the trials. It has to be said that these two shades are particularly successful.
To Keep Your Blue Poinsettia
Care of dyed poinsettias is no different from that of more traditionally colored poinsettias. Moderate lighting and occasional watering, when the soil is dry to the touch but before the foliage begins to fade, will suffice. A normal indoor temperature is also suitable. There’s no need to fertilize them, as there’s no question of reblooming blue poinsettias (which would give white flowers anyway). When they stop flowering in May or June, simply add them to the compost. The “Fantasy Colors” product is not currently available on the retail market, so there’s no way you can dye your own poinsettias.
But if These Tinctures Were More Readily Available…
… Imagine the fun you’d have! You could also dye the flowers in your flowerbed the colors of your choice. Orange marigolds ring a bell? Perhaps you’d prefer them in purple? Or green? All your roses could be blue… and if you ever find growing the famous blue poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia) too complex, simply dye an easy-to-grow Oriental poppy (Papaver orientale) blue to impress the neighbors.
All that remains is to find dyes for the foliage of the plants. So your cedar hedge could be zebra orange and black, and your blue spruce would be not just bluish, but truly sky-blue. And who wouldn’t want a beautiful red lawn?
Well… maybe not!
Merry – blue – Christmas anyway!
Larry Hodgson published thousands of articles and 65 books over the course of his career, in both French and English. His son, Mathieu, has made it his mission to make his father’s writings accessible to the public. This text was originally published in Le Soleil.
I can’t believe any serious gardeners would go for this. Poinsettias already come in a beautiful array of colors. These seem designed for people who treat plants like decorating accessories, not living things.
I guess I am a purest-always red. It just screams Christmas
That glitter contributes to microplastics in… well pretty much everything. No thank you.
Fantastic, absolutely fantastic reminder of something we may not have thought of. Thank you!!!
GADS! As amusing as this is, it is . . . so weird. Poinsettias are weird anyway. There are so many other flowers to grow that are not so weird. Eventually, I would like to grow poinsettias in the garden again. People tend to throw them away in the months after Christmas. Although white is my favorite color, I would prefer traditional red.