Picking the plant with the brightest red color isn’t
necessarily the
best choice when selecting a poinsettia plant for the holidays.

“You want to select a plant that hasn’t turned completely red
if you
want it to look vibrant throughout the holidays,” said Ron
Oetting, a University of
Georgia entomologist.
“You also want to pick a plant that hasn’t flowered yet.”

The bracts of a poinsettia are often mistaken for the
flower. “The flowers
are not the color,” Oetting said. “The flowers are more
insignificant and
are found in the center of the plant.” He said a good selection
would be
a plant with six to seven bracts (flowers).

“Search for a plant with dark green foliage and a stiff
stem,” he said.
“A good-sized, full plant with five or more branches should be
an excellent
selection.”

Check the base of the plant, because sometimes a pot will
actually contain
two plants.

Growing poinsettias is a $7 million industry in Georgia. But
it’s hard
for growers to make a profit on the plants, Oetting said.

“There’s an overproduction and you have a lot of people who
are growing
low-quality plants,” he said. “They’re flooding the department
stores with
these plants at low prices. Consumers seem to think if it’s got
a little
red on it, it’s a good plant.”

For this reason, Oetting said, the economics of growing
poinsettias
is poor. “Growers don’t get much more for poinsettia plants
today than
they did 10 or 20 years ago,” he said.

Oetting also advises consumers to make sure they aren’t
bringing home
hitchhikers with their new holiday plant.

“Silverleaf whiteflies have been major pests of poinsettias
since the
late 1980s,” he said. “They inhabit the underside of the leaves
and suck
the juices and sap from the plant.”

Evidence of whiteflies is obvious, he said. When they excrete
the plant’s
juices, they drop a “honeydew” substance onto the leaves below.

“If the plant has sticky leaves and you see dots on the
undersides of
the leaves, don’t buy it,” he said. The scale-looking “dots,” he
said,
are whitefly nymphs.

The adult whiteflies look like white flies, giving them the
name. “When
you shake the plant,” Oetting said, “it looks like smoke going
up when
the whiteflies fly out.”

Conducting research at the Georgia
Experiment Station in Griffin, Oetting works closely with
the green
industry to find solutions to problems greenhouse growers face.

He is studying the effects of pesticides, soaps, oils, plant
derivatives,
insect growth regulators, biological control and microbial
control in the
fight against whiteflies.

“Unfortunately, chemical management with pesticides is still
the most
effective means of fighting whiteflies,” he said.