Thread by @JocelynBosse

How did poinsettias become a symbol of the Christmas holiday in the United States?

It is a story that involves plant patents, trade secrets, and a broken monopoly.

Poinsettias are famous for their brightly coloured leaves or “bracts” (not flowers!), which range from the popular red to pink, creamy-white, and variegated colours.

The plant is native to Mexico and Central America, where it is also known by the Aztec name, cuetlaxochitl.

With the colonisation of the Americas, missionaries began to spread Catholicism to the Indigenous communities of Mexico, and used cuetlaxochitl in Nativity scenes. The plant also became known as “flor de la noche buena” or “Nochebuena” or “Christmas Eve flower”.

The name "poinsettia" arose later. It refers to Joel Roberts Poinsett, US Ambassador to Mexico (1825–1829) and a slave owner.

It is widely believed he sent poinsettia to South Carolina and propagated it (but there's little evidence he actually helped bring the plant to the US)

Patents enter the story with the enactment of the Plant Patent Act of 1930. The first poinsettia patent was granted to Stephen M. Page (#PlantPatent 176, granted April 28, 1936).

But since then, nearly half of poinsettia patents were awarded to the Ecke family and company.

Albert Ecke arrived in the US from Germany in 1900, and sold poinsettias at street stands in California.

But it was Paul Ecke Snr. who expanded the business and obtained many plant patents, the first being a variety named “Ruth Ecke” (#PlantPatent 242, granted April 6, 1937)

Since then, the Ecke company obtained many plant patents, such as:

“Variegated Ruth Ecke” (#PlantPatent 336, granted August 8, 1939)
“Barbara Ecke Supreme” (PP 1,055, granted December 18, 1951)
“Ecke's White” (PP 1,802, granted January 20, 1959)

The Eckes maintained a virtual monopoly on the poinsettia market in the US, through a combination of patents and a trade secret: a grafting technique to grow full and compact plants with multiple flower-heads, which is desirable in ornamental varieties.
thehustle.co/how-the-poinse…

But one day, in the early 1990s, Paul Ecke III recounts: "I open up a scientific journal, and there’s an article about some guy in Minnesota, a grad student, who stumbled upon this [grafting] technique, and he just published it for all the world to see.”
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5…

The student was John Dole, who since became a horticulture professor at North Carolina State University.

He published an article in 1988 and gave talks about the technique. “Paul Ecke III [was] not particularly happy about this development,” he says. npr.org/2017/12/22/573…

With that, the Eckes lost their monopoly on dense poinsettia production.

But one thing is consistently left out of this story about Dole independently discovering the trade secret: Dole was receiving funding from the Paul Ecke company the whole time!

In 2002, following the death of Paul Ecke Jr., the US House of Representatives declared the 12th December as "National Poinsettia Day" to recognise his role in making poinsettias "the best-selling potted flowering plant in the United States and in the world" (Res. 471)

Longer version posted here: jocelynbos.se/blog/poinsetti…