Fiery flowers hit OCC

A sea of red, white and green will make its annual appearance Saturday, when Orange Coast College holds its annual Poinsettia Sale.

The sale is a long-standing tradition at OCC. It has grown from a selection of 100 plants to a blowout bash featuring more than 11,000 florist-grade plants, which yields about $30,000 for the school’s horticulture department.

The sale got its start 40 years ago, when OCC ornamental horticulture professor John Lenanton began studying the plants and their famous foliage.

He brought his newfound love with him to OCC in 1970, deciding soon after that the plants would be a perfect Nursery Practice Management class project; Lenanton was seeking a crop that could be planted at the beginning of the fall semester, and sold at the end of it. Poinsettias have a four-month growing cycle.

Most of the plants are sold during a pre-sale for large-quantity purchasers, but the public sale will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the school, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa.

Prices range from $5 to $40. Plants available in the sale include three florist-grade plants in a 6-inch pot and baskets of a dozen plants. This year, two new varieties will be available: peppermint with peach-colored foliage and ice punk, which is bright pink with light speckles.

Flaming beauties

Poinsettias got their start in American homes during the Victorian era, after being introduced by Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American ambassador to Mexico who was appointed by John Quincy Adams.

Poinsett, also a recreational botanist, fell in love with the Euphorbia pulcherrima plant’s foliage in the 1820s when he saw it by the side of a road in southern Mexico.

He brought the plant home to South Carolina, and began cultivating it in greenhouses. The plant became so universally admired that Congress later deemed the date of Poinsett’s death, Dec. 12, as National Poinsettia Day.