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Cultivation

The Aztecs were the first to cultivate poinsettias. Cultivation in the US began when diplomat Joel Roberts Poinsett sent some of the plants back to his greenhouses in South Carolina in the 1820s. Specific details about its spread from there are largely unverifiable, but it was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 's 1829 Philadelphia Flower Show by Colonel Robert Carr. Carr described it as "a new Euphorbia with bright scarlet bracts or floral leaves, presented to the Bartram Collection by Mr. Poinsett, United States Minister of Mexico."

The poinsettia is the world's most economically important potted plant. Each year in the US, approximately 70 million poinsettias are sold in a period of six weeks, at a value of US$250 million. In Puerto Rico, where poinsettias are grown extensively in greenhouses, the industry is valued at $5 million annually. There are over 100 cultivated varieties of poinsettia that have been patented in the US.

To produce extra axillary buds that are necessary for plants containing multiple flowers, a phytoplasma infection—whose symptoms include the proliferation of axillary buds—is used. The discovery of the role phytoplasmas play in the growth of axillary buds is credited to Ing-Ming Lee of the USDA Agricultural Research Service.