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Holiday Flower Show Opening Day
December 3, 2021
The Marjorie McNeely Holiday Flower Show runs December 3, 2021 through January 9, 2022.
Click HERE for the dates of all our flower shows.
Holiday Flower Show
December 3, 2021 through January 9, 2022
The Holiday Flower Show tradition began in 1925 and continues to be the most anticipated and visited flower attraction at the Conservatory today. Red, orange, and yellow novelty Poinsettias will fill the Sunken Garden with warmth and light. Several new varieties of poinsettias will be on display including ‘Orange Glow’, the first truly orange poinsettia and ‘Christmas Mouse’, a red poinsettia with rounded bracts that resemble the shape of mouse ears.
The poinsettia is native to the deciduous tropical forest of the Pacific coast of southern Mexico. There it grows as a large, lanky shrub reaching up to 30 feet in height, where it blooms in late fall. The plant’s common name refers to Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. Minister to Mexico, who sent seeds and samples of the plant back to the United States in the late 1820s.
During the 1800s, the poinsettia was a greenhouse curiosity often used as a short lived, but distinctive, red cut flower. It wasn’t until the 1920s and 1930s that additional colors were brought into the trade. In the 1960s, the introduction of varieties that produced bushy, compact plants led to mass production and marketing. Breeders continue to develop long-lasting poinsettias, and more than 100 new cultivars are in development.
