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The holiday season is here, which means evergreens, poinsettias, amaryllis, and other holiday plants have arrived in stores. Plants are often at the center of our holiday decorations and traditions and are frequently given as gifts. Whether you’re buying them as gifts or for yourself, learn about what to look for when selecting your holiday plants and how to transport them to avoid cold weather damaging them so they can be enjoyed throughout the holiday season.
Skip to what you want to know:
00:35 – Tips on selecting holiday plants
00:44 – Poinsettias
02:20 – Christmas cactus
03:20 – Amaryllis
04:15 – Norfolk Island Pines
05:30 – Inspecting and transporting plants to avoid damage
07:50 – What to look for when selecting Christmas trees
Need information on caring for your holiday plants? Check out these Good Growing articles:
Poinsettias
Holiday cacti
Amaryllis
Norfolk Island Pines
Caring for Christmas trees
Poinsettias
Holiday cacti
Amaryllis
Norfolk Island Pines
Caring for Christmas trees
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Chris Enroth: cenroth@illinois.edu
Ken Johnson: kjohnso@illinois.edu
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Creators & Guests
What is Good Growing?
Talking all things horticulture, ecology, and design.
Welcome to the Get Growing Podcast. I am Ken Johnson, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension, coming to you today from Jacksonville, Illinois with a Gardenbite. And this week, we're gonna talk a little bit about selecting and transporting holiday plants. So the holiday season is here, which means evergreens, poinsettias, amaryllis, and other holiday plants have arrived or have been arriving in stores. These plants are often the center of our holiday decorations and traditions, and are frequently given as gifts.
Ken Johnson:So whether you're buying them as gifts or for yourself, here's a few tips that can help you or the recipient of these plants enjoy them throughout the holiday season. So first off, poinsettias. These are the most popular holiday plants in the United States, and we have about 40 million poinsettias sold every year here in the US. While we grow them as a house plant in their native range in Mexico, they're actually a woody shrub. And what are widely considered to be the flowers of the plants are actually bracts or leaves that look like petals.
Ken Johnson:The actual flowers are are greenish, kinda yellow in color, and are clustered at the center of the bracts, and they're called Cyathea. And these flowers are gonna be important when it comes to picking out our poinsettia plants. So we wanna pay close attention to those. We wanna look for plants that have flowers that have their flower buds that are still closed and have a green tint to them. Flowers that are open and producing pollen, and you can often see this pollen as yellow dust on the leaves, should be avoided, because poinsettias will drop their bracts, and leaves shortly after the flowers shed their pollen.
Ken Johnson:So if you want these your poinsettias to last a long time, look for plants that have the flower buds that are not open yet. And while we have traditionally think of poinsettias as red, breeders have produced a variety of different colored, cultivars nowadays. We can find them in white, pink, orange, gold, and yellow, in addition to red. You can also find some that are striped or speckled with various colors red and white and pinks. What have you.
Ken Johnson:You can also find blue and purple poinsettias. These are not actually plants that are blue or purple. What these are are white or cream colored cultivars that have been painted blue or purple. Another popular holiday plants are Christmas cactus. And while we've commonly referred to these plants as Chris Christmas cacti, there are actually several different type of holiday cactus.
Ken Johnson:So we've got Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter or spring cactus. And they get their common names from the holiday closest to when they traditionally will bloom. However, they can be forced to bloom at other times of the year. So most of the quote unquote Christmas cactus that are sold, in stores are actually Thanksgiving Cacti that have been forced to bloom around Christmas time. Regardless of the type of holiday cacti that you're going to be purchasing, if you want them to bloom around Christmas time, we wanna look for plants that have well developed flower buds, but with no open flowers.
Ken Johnson:And if we're looking in this late November early December time frame. Plants that are in full bloom during this time, will likely be done blooming by the time Christmas rolls around. So if you want plants that are blooming at Christmas and it's late November, early December, look for those that do not have open blooms, but have those well developed flower buds. Amaryllis are another popular flowering plant that we can find this time of year in many stores. And you can get amaryllis 2 different ways.
Ken Johnson:You can find them that are that are pre potted, and occasionally, they'll be growing or or just starting to grow. And with these, all you need to do is give them some light and water. And you can also purchase the bulbs themselves or sometimes kits that have the bulb, some sort of potting media and a pot in them as well, and plant them yourself. When it comes to selecting amaryllis, the size of the bulb is going to be important. The larger bulbs are gonna be able to produce more flowers compared to those that are small.
Ken Johnson:Larger bulbs also tend to produce thicker, stronger stems. They're gonna be much less likely to flop over. So when you're looking for amylose, try to purchase the largest bulbs possible for the best floral display. You also want to inspect the bulbs to make sure they're firm. They don't have any mold or decay or other signs of injury on them.
Ken Johnson:Last up, we'll talk about Norfolk Island pine, and these are often marketed, and sold as living Christmas trees. And you can also find them adorned with bells and bows and other things on them, kinda predecorated, so to speak. Despite their name, these are these evergreens are not actually pines. They belong to a completely different family of plants, the Oricoraceae, whereas pines belong to Pineaceae. In their native habitat in the South Pacific, Norfolk Island Pines can grow to be over 200 feet tall and have diameter trunk diameters to up to 10 feet.
Ken Johnson:So these can be very large plants. However, when we grow them indoors, they're in less than ideal locate conditions. We usually don't have a whole lot of light and stuff. They usually only grow a couple inches a year when grown indoors as houseplants. When reflecting Norfolk Island Pines, we're gonna look for plants that are uniformly green and that and have few brown or yellow needles on them.
Ken Johnson:We wanna make sure we pay close attention though. Oftentimes, these plants will be spray painted green or covered in glitter. And this is gonna interfere with the plants ability to photosynthesize. So if you wanna keep your plant around long term, wanna try to avoid painted plants or be prepared to remove as much of that paint or glitter as possible. Now regardless of the type of, of plant, these house how they house plants that you're gonna purchase, regardless of the type, we wanna make sure we inspect them carefully to ensure they are they appear healthy, and they are free of pests and diseases.
Ken Johnson:And we don't wanna bring any plant problems home on these plants so they can spread to your other house plants you may have indoors. When it comes to transporting, these holiday houseplants, most of the these are all pretty much all gonna be tropical in origin. So exposure to cold conditions, can damage or even kill plants if they're exposed for long enough. So there's a few different things we can do to try to prevent damage to our new to our newly purchased plants. If you're gonna be making multiple stops while you're out purchasing your plants, try to arrange your your trips so that you're purchasing your plants to your last stop to avoid leaving leaving them in a vehicle where they're not gonna have any heat on them.
Ken Johnson:If possible, avoid purchasing your plants, particularly cold or windy days, whichever last can be easier said than done during the winter. And this is, again, is gonna reduce the chances of them being damaged, being exposed to those cold cold winds. We also wanna try to insulate our plants the best that we can. You can try calling the store beforehand to see if they have material you can use to insulate your plants like paper. Or if they don't, or if you don't feel like calling them, bring some of that stuff with you so you can insulate your plants before you bring them outdoors.
Ken Johnson:After you purchase those plants, wrap them in paper and then place them in a bag. Double bagging them if possible. And keep the tops of the bag as cold, so you don't get any, cold air coming in from the top. Paper bags are gonna insulate better than plastic bags, or if you've got disposable, shopping or not. Reusable shopping bags, Those will also insulate better, than your typical plastic bag you'd get at a store.
Ken Johnson:You also ideally, you're gonna have your vehicle warmed up before you put the plants in. So it might be helpful to bring along a friend or friends or family with you. Somebody that can go out and start that car start the car or your vehicle before you bring your plants out and get it nice and warm before you bring your plants out. And we also don't wanna put plants in the vehicle trunk. Trunks are typically going to be colder than the cab of the vehicle.
Ken Johnson:So, yeah, they're gonna be exposed to colder conditions in there. We also want to try to avoid letting the plants foliage touch cold windows, because this can damage the leaves as well. As this around the topic of holiday plants, talk briefly about selecting a a real Christmas tree. Some of the things we should think about before we select those trees. So we wanna first we wanna measure the height and the width of the space we're gonna be putting those trees.
Ken Johnson:We don't wanna buy a tree that's too big for where we're going to be putting it. When we're we wanna try to choose a fresh tree. So those trees are gonna have a healthy green full appearance with, again, a few brownie needles, similar to our Norfolk Pallet Pines. The needle should be flexible. And if you run your hand through the branches, the needle shouldn't fall off.
Ken Johnson:You can also try picking up the tree, couple inches off the ground and drop it on the butt end. And when you do that, you should have very few needles fall off. If a lot of needles are falling off, that may be an indication that tree is drying out. It may be a good idea to look for a different one. It's also a good idea to think about how your tree is going to be displayed.
Ken Johnson:So if you're gonna be displaying have your tree set up in front of a large window, you probably wanna have the tree looking good all the way around. You're sticking your tree in the corner of a room. If you've got one side that's got a big gap in it, you can put that in the corner and hide it. The the more perfect what perfect a tree is, more than likely the more expensive it is. So keep that in mind.
Ken Johnson:And then finally, when we look at the base or the handle of the tree and make sure that's nice and straight for at least 6 to 8 inches. That's way it's gonna be easy to fit that into the stand, and then as well as make that fresh cut before we put that in the stand so it can take up water well. If you need more information on caring for any of these holiday plants, you can check out our good growing blog. We have articles on all these different plants and how to care for them, and we've put links in the show notes below. That's all I've got for you for this week.
Ken Johnson:Hopefully, these tips will help you select plants that are gonna last a little bit longer during the holiday season as well as maybe not get damaged when you bring them outside from the store. Good Growing Podcast is a production of the University of Illinois Extension. To our listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and as listening, or if you're watching us on YouTube watching, and as always, keep on growing.