Poinsettia

   The poinsettia is a genus of tropical American herbs and woody plants with inconspicuous yellow leaves and tapering bright red flowers. Especially popular around Christmas, the plants were brought from Mexico to the United States by a South Carolinian. That man, Joel Roberts Poinsett (1799-1851), had a fiery personality and style of living that matched the flamboyancy of those yuletide flowers. Poinsett brought a flower from Mexico that was renamed the poinsettia in his honor. He was the first to introduce the wild plant to floriculture.

   Poinsett was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and educated in Europe, but only somewhat. He matriculated in a medical school, then in a law school, dropped out of both and devoted himself to travel for seven years in Europe and and western Asia. President Madison sent him to South America to investigate the development of independence. But Poinsett's behavior was such that the British said, "he was the most suspicious character" representing the United States and "a scourge of the American continent, contaminating the whole population." Poinsett served in Congress when Madison was president, and became America's first minister to Mexico. Under president Martin Van Buren, he became the secretary of war. He had a pretty good record for a man who had been declared persona non grata in South America and had been lucky to escape with his hide unscathed.

   In any event, this gorgeously colored Mexican species, the poinsettia, takes its name from Poinsett and has become the floral symbol of Christmas, brightening, for more than a century, many Christmas hearths.