LAVAL -- Quebecers can find poinsettias, the popular plant commonly known as the Christmas Flower, at a fitting place: Rue Noel.
That’s the Laval street where Ferme Grover, Quebec’s biggest producer of the flower, is located.
Director of production Guillaume Grover points out that the flower is a fickle one.
“They need to have sunlight but not direct light,” he said. “Also make sure they’re not too near to a heating system or too much air. Not too cold, not too warm, not too dry and not too much water. It’s like Goldilocks.”
While the season favourite accounts for only eight per cent of the farm’s annual sales, during the holiday season deliveries are made to 250 spots per week, mostly to big box stores like Home Depot and Loblaws.
The flower is indigenous to Mexico and got its English name from John Roberts Poinsett, the American ambassador to that country in the 1820s. An amateur botanist, Poinsett brought the flowers home as gifts for friends.
La Ferme Grover hires seasonal workers from Mexico to tend to their crop.
The flower got its Christmasy reputation from how it blooms: as December approaches and the hours of sunlight decrease, new leaves– called bract –gradually change colour from green to red.
“It’s the newer leaf,” said Grover. “They’re going to be green, green, slowly a bit red and then deep red and at the end they’re going to make a flower.”
He warned that once taken home the flowers still need some TLC.
“They are capricious,” he said. “It’s a baby. Yeah they’re easy to grow but we need to take care of them every single day. People can make poinsettias last for three months and some really good grandmothers can make them last for a year but (usually) after two months, they’re done.”
