Straight-Up Poinsettias

 
Straight-Up Poinsettias—big holiday drama with heirloom appeal

Styles and tastes evolve, and our Poinsettias have done the same. Newer cultivars grow lower and branch more freely, so they create a wider, rounder plant that is more popular today. This modern look reflects the Poinsettia’s movement onto tabletops and into centerpiece displays. Lower arrangements allow guests to see over the plants and across the table to converse with other party guests, for example.

More centerpiece work does not mean that floor-driven displays have gone away at all. They are still very much a part of public presentations where we need big holiday drama. Consider the Poinsettias we use for flanking the fireplace, surrounding the Christmas tree in a corporate lobby, lining church railings, or creating a festive environment in a big retail space.

In the Straight-Up technique the focus is on building big bracts of color up top

This is where varieties cultivated in the original Poinsettia growing style shine. Known in the trade as Straight-Up, the technique features strong central stems—unpinched—that focus on building big bracts of color up top. Allowing the plants to grow freely without pinching results in large, sumptuous bracts. In the centers, we also see the cyathia more prominently.

Straight-Ups display their cyathia more prominently

Straight-Up was the dominant Poinsettia style a few decades ago, so it is even considered a traditional or heirloom look. We find it suitable for clients who want to harken back to a vintage style of Christmas—either opulent or nostalgic. It’s also effective for displays in institutions like office parks, estates, and businesses within the hospitality industry where clients have large spaces in which to greet their customers.

Cyathia are centered in broad red disks across the top of the plant

These plants easily reach as high as your hips and sometimes higher if left to their own devices, so we only grow Straight-Ups in our largest pot size. If you have a large space to fill, or work with big props that need an appropriate size to match them, take a look at the boom of red that our 15-inch Straight-Up Poinsettias deliver.

This boom of red gives large props a run for their money