19C After Slavery - Corn Shucking in the Moonlight

After Slavery - Corn Shucking in the Moonlight by Mary Lyde Hicks Williams

Mary Lyde Hicks William (1866-1959) Mary's paintings of freed slaves reflect daily life she saw on her uncle's plantation during Reconstruction in North Carolina.

Slave Gardeners - From Raising Tobacco to Food & Flowers

Slave Gardeners in the Mid-Atlantic & South

Enslaved African Americans were the backbone of the garden labor force throughout much of the Mid-Atlantic and Southern gardens planted for both pleasure and use. This pattern persisted throughout the colonial period. After the Revolution, as indentured & convict servants were absorbed into the regular labor pool in America, slaves became even more important as gardeners.

Records for slave gardeners are scant. Sale & runaway advertisements, journals & letters, and a few inventories identify slave gardeners by name.

African American slaves were very familiar with sustenance gardening, even if they worked as a field slave or a house servant during the daylight hours. Many slave owners in the 18th century allowed their workers to layout & plant small gardens to supplement the usually meager food provisions allocated to the field slaves. Some masters intentionally delegated a common plot of ground for this purpose near the slave quarters. Slaves would prepare their garden plots after sundown and on Sundays, when most had a lighter work schedule.

The procedures & problems associated with planting & harvesting herbs & vegetables were the same for both groups of gardeners. The the slaves knew the challenges well, since some on each plantation helped plant & maintained the gardens of their masters. Nature makes no class distinctions. It was inevitable that enslaved African Americans would become the backbone of both the pleasure garden and the kitchen garden labor force.

It may have started with growing tobacco, but turned to growing fruits & vegetables and planning more elegant landscape gardens by the 18th-century.  Slaves working with tobacco in Virginia, attributed to an unknown artist, 1670.

In South Carolina during the 1740s, several runaway notices mentioned gardeners, both enslaved and serving under an indenture. RUN away, an old Negro Man...is a Gardener (South Carolina Gazette, May 26, 1746).

Caesar was the slave gardener of Joseph Wragg who died in Charleston County, South Carolina, in 1753. Caesar was valued at 400 pounds, when his ownership transferred to Elizabeth Manigault, wife of Peter Manigault. Quash was the slave gardener of Joseph Wragg who lived in South Carolina as well. He was valued at 120 pounds, and his ownership fell to Charlotte Wragg.

In 1756, John Swift, a merchant in Market Street, Philadelphia, advertised for sale a young "Negroe man" who "understands gardening." Two slave gardeners were auctioned at the London Coffee House in Philadelphia on July 6, 1769. When John MacPherson decided to sell his plantation in Northern Liberties, on the Schuykill, he also auctioned off his two "young healthy" slave gardeners in 1769.

In 1769, William Bethune, identified as a gardener of Charleston, South Carolina, sells two garden slaves to Daniel Cannon, a carpenter.

A June 1773 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette carried an advertisement for the sale of "Three healthy likely Negroe men" capable of attending a garden. A notice in the same newspaper in 1782, advertised for the return to John Churchill of Fauquier County in Virginia of a "likely Virginia born Slave named Jacob" who was well acquainted with gardening.

As Edward Lloyd IV designed & planted his Annapolis gardens in the 1770s, he, too, supplemented his indentured garden staff with slave gardeners, as had Dr. Henry Stevenson; when he installed the terraced falls & geometric flat garden at his Baltimore County seat, Parnassus, in the 1760s.

In Virginia, the Williamsburg gentry vied for the service of James, the slave of Nathaniel Burwell. He served under four head gardeners at the Governor’s Palace. Governors Botetourt (Norbonne Berkeley) & Francis Fauquier paid the Burwell family 12 pounds per year for his services, & Governors Dunmore (John Murray) & Patrick Henry each paid 14 pounds a year for his expertise. James was a master at pruning fruit trees, transplanting native seedlings, & forcing plants in hot beds & bell glasses.

On April 5, 1777, Virginia plantation owner Landon Carter, having surveyed his newly green fields & budding trees & just about able to taste the strawberries setting flower in his garden, wrote in his diary, “My gardiner now 5 days weeding his Strawberry beds & not yet half done them. They must be well whipt.”

Quomina was listed as a slave gardener at the Snee Plantation of Charles Pickney, when Pickney died in 1782.

African American slaves were often purchased by the new crop of professional white gardeners & plant merchants who appeared in growing numbers throughout the Mid-Atlantic & South after the Revolution, to tend their nursery gardens, sell their stock at market, & maintain the gardens of their regular clients. These new garden entrepeneurs, usually freshly arrived from overseas, knew they could learn from their enslaved servant gardeners, who had been tending America's gardens for decades.

After the death of longtime South Carolina gardener, John Watson, his sons James Mark & John carried on his nursery business until 1802, when John left South Carolina for health reasons. The Charleston Times ran the following notice on April 30, 1802. “The Subscriber BEING obliged to leave the country on account of his bad state of health, offers his handsome retreat for sale...the land is in the highest state of cultivation, both with vegetables and as complete a Nursery as Carolina can produce. He likewise offers his valuable NEGRO FELLOW, complete gardener and understands perfectly the management of raising, grafting, budding, and pruning of trees-it is unnecessary to mention any particulars about him, as he is well known in this city, JOHN WATSON.”

In the 1790s, visiting English agriculturalist Richard Parkinson insisted that, of all of the help he had to hire outside of his immediate family, white agricultural & garden labor was inferior to black labor, “for all the white men I employed there ate much & worked little…the black man or slave is both clothed & fed at less expense than a white man…they bear the heat of the sun much better than any white man, and are more dexterous with the hoe.”

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (English-born American artist, 1764-1820).  An Overseer Doing His Duty, sketched from life near Fredericksburg, 13 March 1798

Craftsman William Faris owned several slaves over the period of his residence in Annapolis. His most constant gardening companion during the 1790s was his slave Sylva. Parkinson wrote of the advantages of buying female slaves, less expensive than males, to assist in Mid-Atlantic & Upper South agricultural pursuits. He noted that they could perform gardening tasks as well as male slaves, & “the women will be a saving…in the first place, & they will wash & milk.” Faris did indeed use Sylva to cook & help with general housework as well as to work regularly as his primary gardener during the growing season.

In Virginia, George Washington employed both male & female slaves in creating his garden. A 1799 visitor to Mount Vernon wrote, “Here many male & female negroes were at work digging & carrying away ground to make a level grass plot with a gravel walk around it.”

Records show Stephen Bordley spending 3 hours each day during the growing season with his slave head gardener on his Wye Island plantation. Annapolitan Charles Carroll kept slaves at his Doughoregan Manor plantation to tend the gardens including Jack & Harry who appear in Carroll inventories as gardeners.

Both Faris & Parkinson also rented the male slaves of others to assist with garden labor. Many slaves who worked in gardens were “hired” on a short-term basis. Hiring out was a system in which a gardener would temporarily lease a slave from an owner. In this system, slave owners generated revenue from their slaves’ labor without having an investment in the actual work itself. Specialized slaves, such as seasoned garden workers, were more likely to face weekly, monthly, or yearly hiring than being permanently sold.  Such slaves and the variety of jobs reflected not only the flexibility of slavery but also the importance of slaves as capital for owners.

The hiring-out system generated a potential tension between hirer and owner.  Slave renters wanted to make the most out of a short-term investment; owners wanted to protect their long-term capital. Contracts typically placed the burden of clothing, food, and shelter on the hirer. 

Physical distance between hirer and owner gave hired slaves an opportunity to influence their own experience, and this daily resistance undermined the hirer’s authority. Parkinson’s writings give a glimpse into the lives of the slaves he rented in Baltimore in the late 1790s, “Though you have them slaves all the day, they are not so in the night. All the black men I employed used to be out all night & return in the morning.” 

No matter how the rented slaves spent their nights, they were expected to begin working vigorously the following morning. Shortly after Faris employed his neighbor Mrs. Brewer’s slave Harry, the craftsman wrote in his diary, “Man Harry crawled Home this morning between 6 & 7. Went to Working Dung on the older bed by the Walnut Tree.”  Many slaveholders questioned the safety of hiring out because in practice it gave slaves some slight power in who they worked for and under what terms.

By the end of the 18th century, Maryland slaveowner James Moss wrote in his journal, that his slaves raised thousands of watermelons on his plantation. His slave Mingo took them to market to sell in Baltimore after each harvest.

Professional gardener James Wilkes offered an unusually high $100 reward for his 25-year-old runaway slave gardener, John, in Baltimore in 1801. Two other independent Baltimore gardeners, Philip Walter & John Mycroft, also used slaves to assist to their gardens.

In November of 1803, Rosalie Steir Calvert of Riversdale in Prince George County, Maryland, wrote her mother, “My gardener John works as hard as four people—he is a good man.” John was one of the slaves from her husband George Calvert’s plantation, Mount Albion. However, in early 1805, Rosalie Calvert was unable to control her husband's slave gardener and wrote, “I had to dismiss my gardener John because he had become so insolent. He has been back three times since, begging me to take him back.” Perhaps life as a garden slave was more desirable than life as a field slave.

Unfortunately, very little is known about most slave gardeners, like the following South Carolina gardener. In her will proven on November 21, 1815, Rebecca Motte of Elderado Plantation in the parish of St. James Santee left to her son-in-law, Major Thomas Pickney and his wife, her daughter Frances, a slave gardener named Adam from that plantation.

One South Carolina gardener did the unusual at the time of his death. Sebastian Spencer was identified as a gardener of Hampstead at the time of his death in 1817. He was married to Elizabeth Spidel in December of 1783, in South Carolina. In his will, he emancipated several of his gardening slaves, leaving them money as well.

Garden Labor - Renting out Indentured Servants in colonial America

Indentured & Convict Servant Gardeners Rented Out in the Mid-Atlantic & South

Mid-Atlantic & South landowners commonly rented the unused time of their indentured gardeners to others. The practice of renting out servants & slaves with special skills allowed those who could not afford to buy an entire indenture or a slave to have an opportunity to use their expertise in the planning & installation of their gardens or to undertake special projects without a large capital outlay.

In May 1738, Sarah Blakeway advertised in the South Carolina Gazette that she had a gardener to hire out. Blakeway was apparently a planter of some importance in her own right. She often advertised in the newspaper for slaves to hire out, houses for rent, Indian corn and land for sale. In 1741, she announced her intention to leave the province selling her land, slaves, piano, mahogany chairs, beds, and books.

In 1750 Philadelphia, William Sellars in Letitia Court advertised in the Pennsylvania Gazette to sell the time of his English indentured servant. The servant had 4 years left to serve on his 7 year indenture, and he understood "gardening very well."

Two years later, another English indentured servant, a 22 year old "gardiner by trade who understands the management of trees" was offered for sale for about 3 1/2 years of the remainder of his contract. Inquiries about buying his time could be made at the Philadlephia New Printing Office.

Occasionally, landowners simply lent idle or unfriendly garden servants to family & friends. In the spring of 1751, in Williamsburg, John Blair Sr. (1687-1771) lent to Peyton Randolph (1722-1775) his gardener, of whom “Mrs. Randolph gave a fine account.”

The servant had a history of picking fights with Blair’s slaves; & in the end, apparently Blair valued his slaves more that his feisty gardener. Shortly after the servant’s return, Blair “ordered the gardener to go, for I couldn’t bear him.”

In 1752, Maryland's Provincial Secretary Edmund Jennings & his wife Catherine of Annapolis, attempted to sell the time of their indentured gardener, noting that he was “an extraordinary good Gardener… understands the laying out of new work or anything belonging to a Garden.”

Even the wealthy rented the services of others’ skilled workers, when they undertook extraordinary projects. Charles Carroll of Annapolis (1702-1782) rented two servant gardeners in 1770. He wrote to his son, “I will give Colonel Sharpes Gardener 3 pounds per month computing 26 Working days to the Month & I will allow the Man who Works with Him 40/ per month if He be a good Spadesman.”

When these particular rented servant gardeners arrived at the Carroll home in Annapolis, the elder Carroll was less that enthusiastic, “Mr. Sharpes…Gardener…I do not like His looks as they are very Scottish, He may buy Rum.”

Garden to Table - - Women as Makers of Cordial & Syrups in 1863

“Indian sugar camp (Maple Syrup) - Capt. S. Eastman, U.S. Army” John C. McRae. , engraver; 1853; courtesy of Library of Congress.  

When European colonists settled the Atlantic coast of North America, area, they learned how to tap maple trees from the indigenous people. However, instead of using a wedge to extract sap, they would drill holes in the trees using augers. They would then insert wooden spouts into the holes and hang buckets from them to collect sap. Colonists made these buckets by hollowing segments of a tree to create a seamless container

Women who live in the country, & have small fruit, would find it pay well to make cordials, berry vinegars, &c. There are some establishments where it is made, & women are employed to gather the fruit. 

The people of the Southern States have depended on the North for these articles, but we presume a change will be wrought. The abundant growth of small fruit in the South will enable the South before long to meet the demand. We think there will be many openings of this kind, in the South & West, for many years to come. 

Some manufacturers of ginger wine, bitters, syrups, cordials, & grape wines, write: “In reply to your circular we say-We do not employ any women in our business, although we indirectly furnish employment for several hundred, during the various fruit seasons, in gathering most kinds of fruit, which we use in our business. Many of these fruits are wild, which we buy at a specified price. The gatherers control their own time, & their earnings will vary from fifty cents to $1 each, per day. It would probably require the labor of abcut six hundred for six months of each year, in gathering the amount of fruit which we use. But as we do not directly employ them, or know anything about the general business of those thus employed, we are unable to give further particulars.”

The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work by Virginia Panny Published Boston, MA. by Walker, Wise & Company. 1863

To read about women's changing roles in the 2nd half of the 19th century. see:
Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York:Random House, 1973.
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1984.
Cott, Nancy. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of Women. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Cott Nancy. History of Women in the United States, Part 6, Working the Land. New York: K. G. Saur, 1992.
Degler, Carl. At Odds: Women and the Family from Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Juster, Norton. So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895. New York: The Viking Press, 1979.
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982
Mintz, Stephen and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1988.
Ryan, Mary P. Womanhood in America front he Colonial Times to the Present. New York: F. Watts, 1983.
Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York Pantheon Books, 1982.
Welter, Barbara. Dimity Convictions : the American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens : Ohio University Press, 1976.

Plants in Early America - The Christmas Poinsettia

Christmas poinsettia by Joel T Fry, curator at Bartam's Garden in Philadelphia. (Joel T. Fry, B.A., Anthropology, Univ. of Penn. M.A., American Civ./Historical Archaeology, Univ. of Penn.)

America's First Poinsettia: The Introduction at Bartram’s Garden Poinsettia's first public display was in 1829 at the PHS Flower Show by Joel Fry, Curator, Bartram's Garden - 12/12/2011

 The Cuetlaxochime were sacred plants in what is now known as the early America Western Hemisphere that were used in ceremonies to celebrate the birth of Huitzilopochtli during winter solstices. They were also used for medicinal and healing purposes to cure sicknesses, aid the flow of breast milk, as well as for dyeing fabrics. Pronunciation: Kwe•tla•so•cheetl

"It is a little known fact that the poinsettia was introduced to the gardening world from the Bartram Botanic Garden in 1829. This international symbol of winter cheer was first successfully grown outside its Mexican homeland by Robert and Ann Bartram Carr at the Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia. The plant now known as poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, is native to the pacific coast of Mexico and has an ancient history of human use. It was almost certainly seen by early European explorers and colonists, but somehow never entered cultivation in Europe. It was re-discovered or at least brought to the attention of the outside world in the 1820s by an American, Joel Roberts Poinsett (1778-1851).

"Poinsett, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, held various diplomatic and political positions through his life, but always continued a strong interest in natural science and horticulture. He first served as a special envoy to Mexico in 1822-1823, and when the new Mexican Republic was recognized in 1824, Poinsett was first U. S. Minister Plenipotentiary. He resided in Mexico from 1825 to early 1830. During this period, perhaps in the winter of 1827-1828 Poinsett encountered the unnamed plant that now bears his name.

"As part of his mission to expand cooperation between the two countries, Poinsett shipped plants and seeds between Mexico and the United States. At present there is evidence that four different collections of seeds and plants were sent from Mexico to Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia in the period 1828-1829. Poinsett was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in early 1827, and this seems to have cemented his connection with the Philadelphia scientific community and with Bartram’s Garden .In early 1828, William Maclure, a longtime friend of Poinsett, and Thomas Say, a Bartram nephew, travelled to Mexico, visiting Vera Cruz and Mexico City. William Keating, a geologist from the University of Pennsylvania also traveled to Mexico in 1828 to prospect for American mining interests. Poinsett, Maclure, Say, and Keating all arranged for Mexican seeds of plants to be sent to Bartram’s Garden.

"Thomas Say sent over a hundred varieties of seeds from Mexico, “of my own collecting” in a letter to Robert Carr dated July 23, 1828. This list is in large part made up of fruits and vegetables offered in the markets in Mexico, but some trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants from the wild were included, notably several forms of cactus. William Maclure returned briefly to Philadelphia in the fall of 1828, and he brought yet more Mexican seeds and plants with him. This is the most likely route for plants of the poinsettia to Bartram’s Garden.

"Robert Buist, a Philadelphia nurseryman, remembered seeing the first poinsettia roots unpacked at Bartram’s Garden in 1828: “On my arrival in this country from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, in 1828, I paid a visit to the famed “Bartram Botanic Garden,” and there saw two cases of plants which had just arrived from Mexico. Among the contents were the stumps of a strange-looking Euphorbia, which, after a few months’ growth, showed some very brilliant crimson bracts.” (The young Buist soon built a very successful career on the new scarlet plant, and as a result he was credited with the introduction of the poinsettia to Europe in 1834.)

"The paper trail of the poinsettia next appears at “The first semi-annual Exhibition of fruits, flowers and plants, of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society,” held June 6, 1829. This was the first public show of the PHS, a tradition continued today as the Philadelphia Flower Show. One of the noteworthy exhibits was “A new Euphorbia with bright scarlet bracteas or floral leaves, presented to the Bartram collection by Mr. Poinsett, United States Minister to Mexico.” There can be no doubt that this was the poinsettia, now known as Euphorbia pulcherrima. The plant on display, apparently the original sent from Mexico, was still colorful in early June. And while we now take for granted the connection of poinsettias and Christmas, it would take a while for nurserymen to reliably flower the new scarlet plant in time for the early winter holidays.

"A year later, in July 1830 a committee of the PHS, “For visiting the Nurseries and Gardens in the vicinity of Philadelphia,” made particular note of the “Euphorbia heterophylla, with its large scarlet flowers,” as well as “some curious species of Cactus, lately received from Mexico” at the Bartram Botanic Garden. At this early stage, the appropriate scientific name for the poinsettia was still in doubt. Poinsettia resembled a known North American native, Euphorbia heterophylla and so for a time it was referred to under that name. Philadelphia nurserymen also used the name “Poinsett’s euphorbia” and around 1832 Robert Buist began using “Euphorbia poinsettia” for the new plant. Between 1833 and 1836 the poinsettia went through a rapid series of scientific names as it was described and published in the US and Europe—first Pleuradena coccinea, then Poinsettia pulcherima, and finally Euphorbia pulcherima. (Although there is still some debate whether some North American Euphorbia species should be split off into a new genus Poinsettia.)

"In the summer of 1833, the botanist Constantine Rafinesque published the first scientific description of the poinsettia in Philadelphia, for his Atlantic Journal. Rafinesque recorded the brief history of the plant in Philadelphia to date: “The Botanical Garden of Bartram received some years ago from Mr. Poinsett our ambassador in Mexico, a fine new green-house shrub, akin to Euphorbia, with splendid scarlet blossoms, or rather bracts. It has since been spread in our gardens near Philadelphia, and is know in some as the Euphorbia Poinseti; but appears to me to form a peculiar genus or S. G. at least”

"In the early 1830s Robert Buist began sending plants or cuttings of poinsettia to Europe, and particularly to his friend James McNab at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. Buist had trained at the Edinburgh garden, and he returned to Scotland in 1831 to acquire stock for his new nursery business. James McNab also visited Philadelphia, and Bartram’s Garden in the summer of 1834, and probably took the first successful poinsettia plants back with him to Edinburgh in the fall.

"The poinsettia flowered in Edinburgh for the first time in the spring of 1835, but imperfectly. When it flowered again in 1836 it was drawn for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. The new euphorbia was re-named Poinsettia pulcherrima by Robert C. Graham, Regius Professor of Botany at Edinburgh, in an article prepared both for Curtis’s and the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. The modern common name “poinsettia” arose from Graham’s description, and as the plant spread rapidly in cultivation in the UK and Europe it was known under the name poinsettia. Unfortunately for history, Graham relied on Buist’s own incorrect account of the introduction of the plant, and omitted any mention of the Carrs or Bartram’s Garden. (Graham’s new genus Poinsettia has since been returned to Euphorbia.)

"It has long been the story that Poinsett personally introduced the poinsettia first to Charleston, bringing the plant on his return from Mexico, and from there it was discovered or sent to the Carrs in Philadelphia. This is impossible for the poinsettia was shown to the Philadelphia public in June of 1829, over six months before Poinsett returned from Mexico. All available evidence suggests that the poinsettia was first sent to the Bartram Garden in Philadelphia in the fall of 1828. The successful transport of live plants from Mexico to Philadelphia in 1828 was almost certainly due to the fact that a number of friends of Bartram’s Garden were on the scene in Mexico. After the new scarlet euphorbia was introduced to the public in 1829, the plant was widely propagated, and became a popular mainstay of the Philadelphia florist trade. The young gardener, Robert Buist, returned to Europe in 1831 and found the scarlet flower was unknown. Buist was a great popularizer of the new plant, but has undeservedly received major credit for its introduction. When Poinsett began to grow his namesake plant in Charleston after his return, it probably returned to him via the Philadelphia nursery community."

A little more to the tale...

Poinsettia plants are native to Central America, especially an area of southern Mexico known as 'Taxco del Alarcon,' where they flower during the winter. The ancient Aztecs called them 'cuetlaxochitl'. The Aztecs had many uses for them including using the flowers (actually special types of bright leaves known as bracts rather than flowers) to make a purple dye for clothes & cosmetics The milky white sap, latex,was made into a medicine to treat fevers.

Poinsettias were cultivated by the Aztecs of Mexico long before the introduction of Europe's Christianity to the Western Hemisphere. These plants were highly prized by Kings Netzahualcyotl & Montezuma, but because of climatic restrictions could not be grown in their capital, which is now Mexico City.

Perhaps the1st religious connotations were placed on poinsettias during the 17C. Because of its brilliant color & convenient holiday blooming time, Franciscan priests, near Taxco, began to use the flower in the Fiesta of Santa Pesebre, a nativity procession. 

The poinsettia may have remained a regional native American sacred plant for many years to come had it not been for the efforts of Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779 – 1851). The son of a French physician, Poinsett was appointed as the first United States Ambassador to Mexico (1825-1829) by President James Madison. Poinsett had attended medical school himself, but was a dedicated, almost obsessive botany-lover.

A German botanist, Wilenow, named it Euphorbia pulcherrima (most beautiful) in 1833, the scientific name to this day. The common name we use today was believed to have been coined around 1836. Philadelphia nurseryman Robert Buist 1st sold the plant as Euphorbia poinsettia, although a German botanist had already given the plant the botanical name Euphorbia pulcherima.

The Poinsettias is native to southern Mexico & Mesoamerica, unlike today’s commercial cultivars, grow into straight& tall trees. Often these trees can reach heights up to 10 feet tall. Through selection & breeding by growers, many cultivars have been developed in the United States & Europe.

After its introduction in Philadelphia, the "poinsettia" was shipped around 19C United States during the 1800's, usually as an outdoor plant for warm climates. 

Around 1920 in southern California, a horticulturist named Paul Ecke became the next key person to promote the poinsettia. He felt this shrub growing wild along roadsides would make a perfect Christmas flower, so set about producing these in fields in what is now Hollywood. 

A few years later, due to the commercial & arts development in Hollywood, he was forced to move south to Encinitas, where the Paul Ecke Ranch produced poinsettias. Through the marketing efforts of Paul Ecke and his sons, the poinsettia became symbolic with Christmas in the United States. 

"On July 20, 2002, the House passed H. Res 471 designating a National Poinsettia Da on December 12, the day of the death of Joel Poinsett, as National Poinsettia Day to commemorate man and the native Mexican Aztec plant.