American Wild Poinsettia Gardens for America's Other Poinsettia

Summary: American wild poinsettia gardens favor one of the Christmas poinsettia's two other pre-holiday-blooming relatives, Johann Andreas Murray's wild poinsettia.

wild poinsettia (Euphorbia cyathophora): Harry Rose from South West Rocks, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

June through October are the months to appreciate the blooms in American wild poinsettia gardens, containerized or soil-bound, cultivated or wild, indoors or outdoors, for one of two relatives of Christmas poinsettias.

Wild poinsettias additionally bear the names dwarf poinsettia, fire-in-the-mountain, Mexican fireplant and painted leaf poinsettia commonly and Euphorbia cyathophora ([ancient Numidian physician] Euphorbus's cup-borne [flowers]) scientifically. They claim a relationship to Joel Poinsett's (March 2, 1779-Dec. 12, 1851) namesake, Christmas poinsettia, through mutual membership with the other spurges in the Euphorbiaceae family. They deserve separate species status from U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Poinsett's poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, and from Michaux's green poinsettia, the second other poinsettia, called Euphorbia dentata.

Wild ponsettias exist as natives in continental North and South America and as naturalized annuals and short-lived perennials in Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Master arborists, master gardeners, master naturalists and tree stewards fault wild poinsettia's aggressive, invasive tendencies in Florida and in South Carolina and in Mexico's Federal District.

Adaptable, tolerant wild poinsettias nevertheless go missing from Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey and North Dakota. Disturbed, filtered, gravelly, moist, shaded, sunlit floodplains, open woods and roadsides in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming have no wild poinsettias. The incidence of American wild poinsettia gardens increases by inviting Johann Andreas Murray's (Jan. 27, 1740-May 22, 1791) wild poinsettias in where legislation is not hostile.

The botany-minded, Stockholm-born physician's descriptions in Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis of 1786 join easy care to jumpstart gardening in soil pHs of 6.1 to 7.8.

Nine- to 12-inch (22- to 30-centimeter) interplant spacing keeps containers and soils sufficiently roomy to kindle realization of 11.81- to 35.43-plus-inch (30- to 90-plus-centimeter) mature heights.

The stems look glabrous (hairless), hollow and multi- or un-branched whereas leaves lie in alternate arrangements farther down stalks and in opposite or whorled farther up. Highly variable leaves, whether elliptic, fiddle-shaped, linear, lobed, oblong or oval and whether fine-toothed or smooth-edged, may mature to 2-inch (5.08-centimeter) widths and 4-inch (10.16-centimeter) lengths. They nestle mostly hairless upper and sparsely hairy lower surfaces along flowering, shorter and non-flowering longer stalks 0.19 to 1.18 inches (5 to 30 millimeters) tall.

Release of an irritating milky sap occurs when leaves and stems break whereas leaf-like, red-based bracts offer nectar to thirsty wildlife in American wild poinsettia gardens.

Opposite-positioned bracts provide indoor and outdoor beauty since green, red-rimmed 0.08 to 0.09-inch (2- to 2.5-millimeter) involucres (cups) proffer dainty, funnel-shaped, indistinct, yellow-brown, yellow-green floral clusters.

Groups of four to five-plus flowers, each with one stamen and two yellow anthers, qualify as the male around one central flower with one six-parted pistil. Bracts, flowers and fruits, explosive, nodding, 0.12- to 0.16-inch (3- to 4-millimeter), three-lobed capsules with three black or brown-black, rough-pitted, round seeds require short stalks. Herbaceous summer cuttings serve as excellent wild poinsettia propagators even though the 0.09- to 0.14-inch (2.2- to 3.5-millimeter) seeds sow excellently indoors before the last frost.

The other poinsettia's easy, natural beauty in American wild poinsettia gardens tell master arborists, master gardeners, master naturalists and tree stewards that Christmas poinsettias are next.

Wild poinsettia is an introduced species in Hawaii; wild poinsettia (Euphorbia cyathophora) with North Pacific native seabird Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), Midway Atoll, east of Sand Island's north south runway: Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

wild poinsettia (Euphorbia cyathophora): Harry Rose from South West Rocks, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Euphorbia_cyathophora_plant1_(14756306610).jpg

wild poinsettia (Euphorbia cyathophora) with Laysan albatross, Midway Atoll, east of Sand Island's north south runway: Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starr_080609-8005_Euphorbia_cyathophora.jpg

For further information:

Dickinson, Richard; France Royer. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

Murray, Jo. Andrea. 1786. "Descriptiones Plantarum Aliquot Novarum et Rariorum." Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis. Volumen VIII. Gottingae (Göttingen, Germany): H. Dieterich.
Available via HathiTrust @ http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015023518254?urlappend=%3Bseq=103

Weakley, Alan S. 2012. Flora of Virginia. First edition. Fort Worth TX: Botanical Research Institute of Texas Press.