Dec 23, 2014

Poinsettia Trends

With Christmas just around the corner, poinsettia season will soon see its end. With so many new introductions each year, I know it can be tasking to figure out which varieties to grow, plus growing poinsettias in general has its own set of unique challenges. I had the chance to catch up with University of Florida’s Jim Barrett, my go-to poinsettia guy. And he shared some insight from U of F’s 2014 poinsettia trial. Here’s what he had to say…

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Over the past several years, the industry’s interest has been in earlier finishing varieties. This year however, I have frequently gotten questions from growers about what the good varieties are for late markets. The University of Florida poinsettia trial had five new red varieties that will be available for growers in 2015. Two of these, ‘Christmas Tradition’ (Ball/Selecta, pictured to right) and ‘Hera Red’ (Beekenkamp, PON 29), are nice, attractive plants that finish about Dec. 10^th and have potential to be good varieties for growers where demand is increasing for later sales.

While red is the dominate color in poinsettias, there is always interest in the novelty varieties, and several new novelties were in the trial. I want to recognize three that may develop to be very important in the novelty category. The jingle bell/glitter category is very popular with consumers, and the new ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ (pictured left), with a bright red background and nice white streak along the middle of the bract, has a more distinctive appearance than others in this category.

A new style of poinsettia is ‘Autumn Leaves’ (pictured below) with bracts that are the colors of leaves in the fall. Finish time for this variety is early November and it will be used to expand the use of poinsettias in the fall decoration market. Also, new for the Christmas market is ‘Luv U Pink’, as cuttings will be available during the normal poinsettia planting period. Pink is not a strong poinsettia color and pink is not a traditional Christmas color. However, the ‘Luv U Pink’ bract color is so bright and strong that it should not be compared to other pink poinsettias. During the past two years at the UF student poinsettia sale, the two novelties the consumers showed the most interest in were ‘Luv U Pink’ and ‘Ice Punch’, which were the two varieties where the students could charge the highest prices.

The UF poinsettia trial is a part of the North American Poinsettia Trials and a full description of the 16 new introductions for 2015 will be in the February issue of GPN.

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Which poinsettias were your strongest sellers? Do you plan to add any of the above to your production next year? Shoot me an email at jdolce@greatamericanpublish.com and let me know. I’d love to hear from you!

Have a Happy Holiday and see you next year!

– Jasmina