Comments on the Poinsettia

The Poinsettia

Ruby red lipstick smeared over a weed

You skirt around in your green underwear

From Mexico you travelled with great speed

And made Albert Ecke a billionaire;

 

You skirt around in your green underwear

Joel Robert Poinsetti you hypnotized

And made Albert Ecke a millionaire

Now the entire world you have mesmerized.

 

Joel Robert Poinsetti you hypnotized

With your flaming bracts and cyathium spell

Now the entire world you have mesmerized

Much love for you in their hearts doth dwell.

 

With your flaming bracts and cyathium spell

A gift of you they send with awesome smiles

The love for you in their hearts doth dwell

As they dress you in lots of pretty styles.

 

A gift of you they send with awesome smiles

Trees of flowers on this the Holy Night

As they dress you in lots of pretty styles

With yellow poinsettia eyes so bright.

 

Trees of flowers on this the Holy Night

Tear-drop leaves joy for the new baby's worth

With yellow poinsettia eyes so bright

Joy-bells ring out at our Savior's birth.

 

Tear-drop leaves joy for the new baby's worth

From Mexico you travelled with great speed

Joy-bells ring out at our Savior's birth

Ruby red lipstick smeared over a weed.

 

Comments on – The Poinsettia

 

The poinsettia is a culturally and commercially important plant species of the diverse spurge family that is indigenous to Mexico and Central America. Its scientific name is Euphorbia pulcherrima. It is known by such names as poinsettia, Christmas Star, Mexican flame leaf, Christmas flower, lobster plant, painted leaf. It is a poisonous plant though some folks would dispute this. It has a milky sap characteristic of all Euphorbia, which can cause skin problems if not washed off. The debate on this is still out there.

 

There is much folklore that surrounds this plant. The Mexicans have their own brand of folklore on this plant. This plant was introduced into the United States of America in 1620 by Joel Roberts Poinsetti, United States Minister to Mexico at that time; its popularity in the USA blossomed in the 1950s.The poinsettia breeders at the time began trying to produce a plant that would rapidly grow into a small bush covered with red leaves. Its commercial value as a plant is noted on account of its growing ways. There are over one hundred cultivated varies of poinsettia. Its religious and other affiliations go back to the Aztecs who used its red dye to reduce fevers and they called it “cuetlaxochiti” meaning “flower that grows in residues or soil”. Modern Mexico calls the poinsettia “La Flor de Noche Buena” meaning “The Christmas Eve flower”. Spain, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and other Central American countries and into Turkey they have their own names for the poinsettia.

 

From the 17^th century Franciscan friars in Mexico included the plant in their Christmas celebrations. Its star shaped-leaves pattern is said to symbolize the “Star of Bethlehem” and the red-color represents the blood-sacrifice through the Crucifixion of Jesus. Poinsettia plants are popular Christmas decorations in homes, churches, in offices, in the West Indies, North American countries and in other lands across the sea.

 

The American poinsettia industry was created by Albert Ecke who emigrated from Germany to Los Angeles in 1900. His poinsettia industry made him very rich and it amassed great family wealth. No doubt he did this because there were no competitors in the industry and more importantly he kept the secrets for breeding all varieties away from the public.  Government saw this and broke the monopoly by bringing more competitors into the market as it were.

 

The pantoum originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century as a short folk poem, typically made up of two rhyming couplets that were recited or sung. The pantoum as we know it today is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

 

The pantoum was especially popular with French and British writers in the nineteenth-century, including Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, who is credited with introducing the form to European writers.