Christmas Plants
Poinsettias are absolutely everywhere during the holidays, and for good reason! They're beautiful, festive, and easy to take care of. With proper care poinsettias should retain their beautiful color throughout the holidays.
Poinsettia plants should not be exposed to cold temperatures. They are best placed in a paper plant sleeve to protect the plant from the cold as well as to prevent them from breaking. If temperatures are well below freezing, all parts of the plant should be protected from the cold. Be sure to remove wrapping as soon as possible after bringing indoors. Remove wrapping from the bottom up to avoid damaging your plant.
Choose an indoor location out of direct heat, cold drafts, and sunlight. Your poinsettia will not do well if placed in a busy entryway where doors are constantly opening. Be sure to keep your poinsettia away from windows because direct sunlight and cool temperatures can cause the foliage to wilt or drop. Cooler temperatures will prolong the bract color.
Check the soil daily and water when dry. If the pot is wrapped in foil or sits in a decorative container, remove it prior to watering. Be sure that your poinsettia never stands in water. If a poinsettia is kept as a gift plant, it is not necessary to fertilize or mist it.
Most poinsettias are discarded after blooming is finished; however, if it will be kept as a houseplant, prune the plant down to approximately half its height, no lower than 6 inches. After new growth begins, a well-balanced fertilizer should be applied at least once during the active growing season. Plants can be placed outside in the summer in a partly shaded location, after all danger of frost. If plants grow too tall and leggy, they can be pinched back to encourage bushier growth. Poinsettias should be returned indoors before the threat of frost.
Encouraging a poinsettia to rebloom will require the plant to be placed where it will receive 12 to 14 hours of uninterrupted darkness each day starting in October for approximately 10 weeks. This can be accomplished by placing the plant in a closet or an unused room that will not receive light of any kind during the evening. During the day, the plant will need to be moved to a bright and sunny location.
Christmas cactus or Thanksgiving cactus?
Christmas cacti and Thanksgiving cacti belong to the same botanical genus, Schlumbergera. It’s easy for even the well-trained eye to mistake them for the same plant. Both grow wild in the mountains of southeastern Brazil, so they prefer things on the cool and shady side, unlike the cacti found in desert habitats. This is partly why they make such easy-care houseplants, though they do need more regular watering than a desert cactus would.
They are also beautiful, especially when in bloom. These plants feature pink, red, white, or yellow flowers on their flattened, spineless, segmented green stems (they technically don’t have leaves.) Though these cacti have similar-looking flowers and stems, each of these features offers clues to help you distinguish a Christmas and a Thanksgiving cactus from one another.
Thanksgiving cactus can be identified by the pointy “teeth” on the sides of each stem segment. These teeth are soft, not sharp, and can vary in size, but are almost always visible on the plant to some degree. The stem segments of a Christmas cactus lack pointed teeth, with more scalloped or rounded edges.
Another way to tell which sort of cactus you have is to look carefully at the flowers, which can bloom anytime in the fall or early winter. Sticking out from each blossom, the cluster of long, thin anthers will be tipped with pollen. If the color of the pollen is yellow, you more than likely have a Thanksgiving cactus, and if it's pink, you've got a Christmas cactus.
When figuring out which one of these cacti you have growing in your house, consider the age of your plant for some hints. In recent years, all sorts of new varieties have been produced with characteristics that blur the differences between the two species. These are what you're more likely to find for sale nowadays, instead of the original species-type plants. So if your plant is a young one from a garden center or grocery store, chances are it's a major mishmash between Christmas and Thanksgiving cacti, and maybe a few other related species.
And no matter which one it is, it will likely reward you with exotic-looking blooms
for a long time during the colder months of the year.
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