December 24, 2020 6 minutes read
are their own. There are several legends that surround the origin of
among the most common flowers of the Christmas celebrations, the oldest guarantees that the Aztec warriors got them as an offering in case of dying in fight, although a variation of the chronicle points out that Cuetlaxóchitl, as the poinsettia flower was then understood, it was offered to the soldiers of pre-Hispanic times as an indication of victory. There is no historical certainty regarding which of
these 2 variations is the true one, what we do know is that the ancient Mexica not only used the flower in an ornamental way or in war rituals, because the Cuetlaxóchitl also had a clearly utilitarian function: it served to dye materials or leather. The Nahuatl word Cuetlaxóchitl ways leather flower, although not
exactly due to the fact that of its use to pigment animal skin, but due to the fact that its star-shaped leaves are as resistant as the aforementioned product. On the etymology, historians have actually not agreed, there are those who state that Cuetlaxóchitl in fact means flower that withers. The fact is that despite its name, or the uses that the ancient Aztecs gave it, the poinsettia flower is among the contributions that Mexico has actually made to the world, together with cocoa and tomato among others. A flower to evangelize Image: Depositphotos.com After
the defeat of the Mexica culture at the hands of the Spanish and the start of evangelization, the very first religious made the most of the fact that the flowering of Cuetlaxóchitl happened in the last month of the year, accompanying the Christian custom of the birth of Jesus. Hence, the friars began to use it as part of the evangelization procedure, asking the indigenous people to harvest it, and then take it to the church as a design for the manger. At that time, the red color of the flower was not considered common of Christmas, since that chromatic recognition emerged up until the middle of the 20th century, from the posters and industrial advertisements of a significant American soda company. In reality, for the Spanish spiritual the Cuetlaxóchitl was only an instrument through which they got the natives to approach the church, in the understanding that this served to make them abandon their old polytheistic religious beliefs. A thousand names and medical usages Image: Depositphotos.com The poinsettia is a shrub in between one and 3 meters high, clinically called Euphorbia pulcherrima. Its red, orange, green, cream-colored or yellow flowers are actually the bracts that protect the real flower found in the center of its body, where the stem ends, according to the Atlas of Plants of Conventional Medicine Mexican from the UNAM. It is the most cultivated decorative plant in Mexico, and the 2nd most important in crops of this enter the United States, only after the orchid. It stopped being wild from the medicinal usage that the ancient inhabitants of the Mexican center and southeast provided it. In the territory that today occupies Mexico City, and the states of Puebla and Morelos, it was used to increase the secretion of milk in women after giving birth, they prepared it in tea or in a plaster that was smeared on the mom’s back who was breastfeeding. In Puebla, the decoction of its flowers also served to control vaginal bleeding, and it even had contraceptive usages, according to the ethnobotany of the Atlas of plants currently pointed out. In turn, in the State of Mexico and Michoacán, the latex that is extracted from the plant is used to get rid of warts and petty, in addition to fires in the mouth and sores. It also relieves skin infections and wounds, decreases inflammation from insect bites, while its lemon-roasted leaves remove bumps and swellings. Similarly, its use is understood to deal with respiratory diseases, mumps (mumps), heart disease and even rabies. It is rational that such an old plant with so many properties gets different names, among these stick out: In Mexico, Custicpascua Xóchitl(yellow poinsettia), Pascuaxóchitl(poinsettia), poinsettia, and poinsettia stick. In Argentina it is called a federal star, poinsettia, pascuero, or shepherdess; in Venezuela it is called the parrot, while in Nicaragua it is called a shepherd flower. In some locations of the American Union it is called Christmas star(Christmas star ). In the remainder of the world it is known as Poinsetia( poinsettia in English), in honor of the male who presented it to the United States in the 19th century: Joel Roberts Poinsett, a physician, botanist and military guy, considered the first ambassador of that country in Mexico, which in 1828 he took numerous copies of the flower, therefore promoting its internationalization. A patent flower Image: Depositphotos.com At the beginning of the 20th century, particularly in 1909, the German emigrant Albert Ecke started the mass cultivation of poinsettias in the town of Encinitas, in the state of California. Over the years, Ecke made different variations on poinsettias , making them not just red or yellow, in truth the plant that is marketed in the United States has a wide variety of colors and various shapes in its foliage, thanks to the experiments of Albert Ecke, who patented each of these modifications. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Ecke household owns about 500 patents for an equivalent number of variations made to the plant. For 103 years, the Ecke cattle ranch in Encinitas, California, held a global monopoly on poinsettia flower production . Article curated by RJ Shara from Source. RJ Shara is a Bay Area Radio Host (Radio Jockey) who talks about the startup ecosystem – entrepreneurs, investments, policies and more on her show The Silicon Dreams. The show streams on Radio Zindagi 1170AM on Mondays from 3.30 PM to 4 PM.
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