In cheerful shades of red, pink and white.

No other plant says Christmas like the poinsettia.

But how did this winter blooming shrub that's native to southern Mexico become the official Christmas flower in the United States?

The Poinsettias festive journey begins with the Aztecs.

They called it cuetlaxchitl, which means flower that withers.

The Aztecs also prized the plant for its red-purple dye and medicinal properties.

With the European colonization of Mexico, cuetlaxochitl found itself tied to the nativity of Jesus through legends of miraculous transformation.

Franciscan friars gave it the name Flor de Nochebuena or flower of the Holy Night because it blooms at Christmas time.

Joel Roberts Poinsett introduced the plant to the United States in 1828.

He was the first ambassador to Mexico and a botanist.

Pointsett was enchanted with the blooms he encountered in Taxco, Mexico.

He carefully cultivated the plants in his greenhouses in South Carolina, sharing them with his friends and botanical gardens.

It was eventually named Poinsettia in his honor and lost its Mexican identity.

Decades later, in Southern California, the Ecke family of Encinitas saw an opportunity to grow poinsettias in pots.

They could now be mass produced and became the most popular plant sold during holidays, gaining a prominent place in many holiday traditions.

Today, over 2 million poinsettias are sold every year all over the United States and Canada, including Burlington, Iowa.

Steve Ritter and his family have been raising poinsettias here for decades.

Well, my father actually started growing poinsettias many years ago down in Fort Madison.

And then it's just been a natural since we built the greenhouse up here that we've been growing them now for 40 some years.

This little part right here is actually the flower and the flower initiation is that little yellow part in the middle of the red leaves.

The red leaves are called bracts and that's what 90% of the people call the flowers.

But the flowers are actually very small.

They're less than a quarter inch.

But the bracts, a full head of bracts will be, you know, 8 to 12 inches across.

And so those are gorgeous.

This is pretty pleasant working with poinsettias now when it's cold outside.

They all get planted in July.

It's not necessarily that pleasant in here then.

The two things that you've got to have is continuous darkness for so many hours to trigger the blooming.

And then you also have to have nighttime temperatures dropped down into the sixties in order to really bring out a lot of color.

That makes it a little difficult for people to do at home if they turn lights on and off.

It isn't just so many hours of darkness.

It has to be continuous darkness.

Well, we buy them in as different colors and it is fun to watch.

And when you get them in, they're all obviously little cuttings of green.

So you got to trust them that they're going to turn the different colors.

Red is obviously the most popular.

It's Christmas color.

White, red and white together is always good.

And there's the it's called glitter.

The glitter is actually really coming on strong now because it does so many different things.

It'll be some of them will be speckled, some of them will be more white, some of them will be more red.

But you never know what you're going to get until it's finished.

And we've tried to pick out the nicest ones and put it inside our store so that people can come pick them out from there.

Doesn't matter.

They still come out here.

They'll take a much what I don't think is as nice of plant, but they picked it out themselves.

So I think they just like the experience of coming out in the greenhouse and having so many to choose from.

It's fun to see the look on people's faces when they come out here and look at the poinsettias because they just the color is just jaw dropping.

I mean, it's just they walk in or they go, Oh, wow.

And that's that's that's a lot of fun.