Poinsettia
A Mexican shrub whose leafy bracts turn red in December, called flor de Nochebuena in Mexico and cuetlaxóchitl in Nahuatl. Franciscan friars at Taxco used it to dress nativity scenes, and it reached the United States in the 1820s, where it took the name of Joel Poinsett.
Meaning
What looks like a red flower is a ring of bracts, leaves near the flowers that are green until the plant blooms in winter, as Laura Trejo Hernández of UNAM’s Institute of Biology explains in Gaceta UNAM. The Nahuatl name, cuetlaxochitl, is translated “wilting flower”, and she ties it to the plant’s habit of drying in direct sun; INAH also gives “of leather”. Spanish speakers know it as Flor de Nochebuena, Flor de Pascua, Pastora or Corona del Inca, among other names. In villages near where it grows wild, people still put it on their altars. Gaceta UNAM adds that in China it is grown for its shape and colour with no religious meaning, and that in Spain it is also the flower of friendship.
Origin and history
Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) writes that the plant grew in the gardens of the rulers Nezahualcóyotl and Moctezuma and was sacred to the Mexica, who tied it to blood and the renewal of life. It was needed for the feast of Tlaxochimaco, dedicated to the dead, when the spirits of fallen warriors were believed to return and drink from it, and it flowers near the winter solstice, at the time of Panquetzaliztli, the feast of the birth of the sun god Huitzilopochtli. The earliest written references are in the codices gathered by the friar Bernardino de Sahagún in his Historia de las cosas de la Nueva España.
The Franciscans, according to INAH, took up the flower for their nativity scenes, which eased the move from the cult of the sun to the birth of Jesus. UNAM Global dates this to the 17th century, at Taxco in Guerrero. In 1825 the United States sent Joel R. Poinsett to Mexico as its first minister. His collections went to Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, which showed the plant at the end of 1829 as the Poinsettia, in his honour. In the early 20th century Albert Ecke, a German immigrant in California, began growing it on a large scale.
Did Poinsett find it near Taxco?
The story is told, but not proven. UNAM Global (2024) says that Poinsett took cuttings to Philadelphia in 1828. Gaceta UNAM (2019) calls the account of Poinsett and his friends finding the plant in the ravines of Taxco “unverified data”: Trejo Hernández has not found the source for it, though she has found documents showing that Poinsett sent collections to Bartram’s Garden, whose owners wrote of receiving four shipments of cuttings, seeds and other plants.
Read next
- Next in Christmas symbolsYule logA great log laid on the hearth on Christmas Eve and kept burning through the feast, once common in England, France, Italy, Germany and among the South Slavs. In French the name now also belongs to the bûche de Noël, a Christmas cake shaped like a log.
- Some lists give the poinsettia as a December birth flowerDecember birth flowers: narcissus and hollyDecember’s birth flowers are the narcissus, usually the paperwhite, and the holly; some lists give the poinsettia. The Victorian flower dictionaries gave the narcissus egotism or self-love, and the holly foresight.
See also
Nativity scene, Star of Bethlehem, Advent wreath, Christmas tree, Holly, Mistletoe.
Sources
- Cuetlaxóchitl: de las fiestas mexicas al nacimiento de Jesús (INAH, 2025), Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Foto del día, 8 December 2025, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), Foto del día
- Nochebuena: la flor que México le regaló a la Navidad (Gaceta UNAM, 2019), Rafael López, Gaceta UNAM, 9 December 2019; interviews Laura Trejo Hernández, Instituto de Biología, UNAM, Gaceta UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), article text
- La Nochebuena: orgullo mexicano y un emblema navideño mundial (UNAM Global, 2024), UNAM Global revista, 6 December 2024, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM Global), article text
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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