Growing Christmas Plant Is Multimillion-Dollar Industry

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service

MEXICO CITY -- It's almost Christmas, so Angel Mendoza is in a hurry to load the last of his 40,000 poinsettia plants onto the barges that will float them from island greenhouses to mainland markets for holiday sales.

"We have Christmas traffic jams on the water," said Mendoza, 37, a fourth-generation horticulturist who spends all year coaxing the scarlet-leafed plants to healthy bloom. "They are beautiful. It's like working with art."

Poinsettias are the pride of Xochimilco, a district of meandering canals and tiny islands on the southern edge of the capital. It is one of Mexico's most picturesque tourist spots. Built on an ancient lake by the Aztecs five centuries ago, its name means "the place where the flowers grow."

In recent years, poinsettia cultivation in Mexico has blossomed from a small garden business into a multimillion-dollar industry. In the 1950s, perhaps 20 families in Xochimilco grew poinsettias; now more than 1,000 families operate greenhouses nearly year-round. Flowers are grown here, too, but beginning in August, nearly 250 acres of greenhouses are taken over by poinsettias, according to city officials.

The peak of poinsettia season is Christmas. In Mexico, the plants are called nochebuenas, the Spanish term for Christmas Eve, and more homes are decorated for the holidays with poinsettias than Christmas trees.

"They have become a symbol of Christmas," Mendoza said.

In early December, hundreds of thousands of plants are taken from their island hothouses, floated a short distance down the National Canal and then loaded into trucks to be shipped to markets. On busy days, as many as 50 barges, overflowing with the bright red leafy plants, fill the narrow waterway.

Originally from Mexico, poinsettias were introduced to the United States in the 1820s by Joel Roberts Poinsett, who served as U.S. ambassador here. Poinsett was also the U.S. secretary of war and a key reason the Smithsonian became the nation's museum. But in Mexico he is best known for taking a pretty but little-noticed roadside plant to the United States and spreading its fame.

Nearly two centuries later, poinsettias have become the most popular indoor flower plant in the United States. "Even the up-and-coming orchid" ranks behind it, said Charles Nardozzi of the National Gardening Association, based in Vermont.

Because of longtime U.S. restrictions on soil imports from Mexico, the country cannot export potted poinsettia plants to the United States, cutting it off from an enormous potential market. Last year, American growers produced 68 million poinsettias.

But florists here noted that the poinsettia's rising popularity in the United States has been a boon to sales in its native land.

Growers in Xochimilco produce 1.2 million poinsettias a year -- the largest concentration in the nation, according to agriculture officials. Uriel Gonzalez Monzon, chief of economic development for Xochimilco, said local growers cannot keep up with the rising national demand and aim to raise as many as 2 million plants next year.

Gonzalez said the poinsettia trade took off in the 1980s when growers found a way to minimize the risk of financial ruin that could result from damage done to the delicate plants during a single freezing night. Taking a leaf from California, where large numbers of Mexicans work growing poinsettias in greenhouses, Mexican growers started building them, too.

Mendoza, whose extended family owns and staffs 50 greenhouses, said his poinsettias are especially sturdy because of Xochimilco's "perfect altitude" -- 7,000 feet above sea level. Even in December, when the temperature swings from 40 degrees at night to 70 during the day, the poinsettia does not wilt or shrivel, he said. It usually survives for three months, and does not appear in curbside trash until February.

"What flower lasts that long?" asked Mendoza, who rings up $40,000 in annual poinsettia sales.

Every day in December, thousands of buyers descend on Xochimilco's central outdoor market -- which is on land -- to buy poinsettias. Scores of vendors, including Mendoza's mother, sit behind a sea of red leaves, or bracts. Mendoza, whose family sells as many as 1,000 plants a day, said he aims for "intense color" and worries about "sad leaves."

With its colorful floral floats, Xochimilco is "spectacular this time of year," said Ciro Caraballo, a planning and preservation expert from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which declared Xochimilco a World Heritage site in 1987.

Urban sprawl and pollution are threatening the system of canals, but Caraballo is working on a project to protect it. Most tourists, he said, never see the tranquil part of Xochimilco, where the age-old practice of growing plants on islands continues. "Here, the tradition has not been lost," he said.

Mendoza, who started working with poinsettias when he was 7, said he has already taught his young sons how to stay in contact with nature. "I like my job," he said. "If I didn't, I wouldn't produce such pretty flowers."

© 2004