PEEK AT POINSETTIAS

December 25, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

YORK TOWNSHIP, Ohio

This Christmas season is old news to the folks in Northeast Ohio’s poinsettia business.

They’re already focused on determining which types of the favorite holiday plant will grace hallways, tabletops and church altars in 2012.

This month, members of the Greater Cleveland Flower Growers Association gathered to scrutinize 21 poinsettia cultivars during their portion of Ohio’s poinsettia trials, a statewide assessment that helps nurseries decide which plants to grow for next year. The event at Barco Sons Inc., a wholesale greenhouse just outside Medina, was one of five such gatherings around the state where professionals and consumers rated poinsettias on their appearance.

The annual trials are put on by Ohio State University and OFA — the Association of Horticulture Professionals, a trade organization that used to be called the Ohio State Florist Association. Most of the professional participants are greenhouse owners or employees, along with some sales representatives for horticultural companies, said Claudio C. Pasian, an OSU floriculture expert who coordinates the trials.

The plants in the Greater Cleveland trial were all grown in one of Barco’s greenhouses. The company grew multiple examples of each cultivar, but only one representative plant of each type was chosen for the judging.

The plants were identified only by numbers so the judges wouldn’t know their names, although the participants were given that information after they finished their scoring. They were asked to rank each plant on a scale of 1 to 5, choose up to three they considered favorites and provide additional comments — information that will be compiled and shared with growers to help them decide what to order for next Christmas season.

Pens and scoring sheets in hand, the participants perused a row of poinsettia plants, all of them in identical pots and grown under the same conditions. Periodically, the judges would pause in front of a plant, studying its shape or the color of its bracts, the modified leaves that many people think of as a poinsettia’s flower petals.

Pablo Martinez of Green Circle Growers in Oberlin stopped at a rosy pink and cream poinsettia with pronounced red veins and leaned in to peer at the budlike structures at the center of the bloom, which are actually the plant’s flowers. Although the plant, called Ruby Frost, had been the top scorer in earlier judging by consumers, Martinez was troubled by evidence that the flowers hadn’t opened properly. To him it was a tip-off that the plant might be difficult to grow successfully.

A creamy white poinsettia called Whitestar, however, earned his unqualified admiration. He noted its big leaves and its fullness. “That’s a perfect plant,” he said.

The 21 poinsettias that were judged this year represented an unusually small field, said Pasian, an associate professor of horticulture and crop science at OSU’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster Township. Some years, close to 50 types of poinsettias are judged, he said.

The majority of this year’s cultivars were brand new, while others were already on the market. Almost all were red, although they differed slightly in bract shape, color, fullness or other factors.

That didn’t surprise Swimkosky. While some consumers like unusual poinsettias, he said, most still prefer the traditional. “Red is still your key color,” he said.