esrosedotblog

PERENNIALS

Some people let their holiday decorations up all year. Around here, it is the fairy lights on the palm trees. They want us to think that they are just being decorative but we know that they never took the holiday lights down for years after they were put up. Some of them even have the tree growing around the cord.

With us, it is poinsettias. Euphorbia pucherrima.

We want them to last forever.

This year is the most successful. We have two plants.

One, I bought in the supermarket, looks almost as it did the first day we had it.

It sits in the sunroom where there is plenty of light.

The other one, a gift from the family, was a big mother. It is outside in a huge pot at the front of the house. It has gone through a transformation. It has grown new stems and leaves (which are the actual red "flowers") and has many pollen buds. The older leaves have dried and darkened some and the new growth is greenish red.

It looks pretty good but a distant "look" from the day it arrived all bushy and lushly red.

It has gone a bit wild by the look of it and it is the better for it somehow.

I don't know if it will weather the heat and uv radiation or not. That is the finish of most plants. The poinsettia was, at one time, used out here for ground cover on the freeways. I am not sure why they quit. I got some of that variety to plant on our outer banks but they never "took".

We are hopeful. Perhaps when Santa comes in 2009 we will still have these plants to show him.

Labels: desert, holidays, horticulture