Poinsettia Tree Care: Keeping a Tree-Form Poinsettia

What a poinsettia tree is

Texas A&M AgriLife’s Texas Poinsettia Producers Guide lists the tree among the forms growers sell: a 2 to 3 foot trunk with a flowering head 12 to 14 inches across. It says trees need a lengthy growing season, have had limited success in the market and are extremely difficult to ship, which explains why they are rarer and dearer than pots.

The shape is not as odd as it looks. NC State Extension’s plant toolbox describes the poinsettia as a shrub or small tree that grows up to 10 feet tall in its native Mexico and Guatemala; the tree form trains a pot plant toward that.

Choosing one

Use the same checks as for any poinsettia. Iowa State University Extension looks for dark green leaves, bracts with no yellow or brown spots, and true flowers in the center shedding little or no pollen. Texas A&M’s Bill McKinley says the center buds should be tight and yellow. On a tree, look closely at the head: Iowa State warns that poinsettia branches break easily when moved, and NC State says the stems are brittle and need careful handling.

Wrap it for the trip home. Iowa State says even a moment of freezing air can blacken the leaves, and a tall head sticks up into the wind.

More on poinsettias

• Poinsettia care — light, water, feeding, leaf color, repotting, and when a pot goes outside in your zone
• How to Water a Poinsettia, and How Often
• Why Is My Poinsettia Dropping Leaves?
• Poinsettia Care After Christmas: Keep It and Rebloom It
• Poinsettia Tree Care: Keeping a Tree-Form Poinsettia — this page
• Growing Poinsettias Outdoors by Zone (Zones 9–11)
• ZIP code zone finder — your exact USDA zone, to read the tables on these pages against

Light and placement

The sources’ advice for any poinsettia applies to the head of a tree: bright, indirect light near a sunny window (Iowa State, Texas A&M), away from heat registers, outside doors and air conditioners (Iowa State, Texas A&M), and not touching a cold window pane (Iowa State, University of Delaware Cooperative Extension). UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions says direct sun or hot lights can dry the plant out.

Set a tall pot where it will not be knocked: a busy doorway is both a draft and a hazard to brittle branches. Turning the pot now and then, as University of Minnesota Extension does during the fall dark period, keeps one side of the head from leaning toward the window; we found no source that writes about turning trees in particular.

Watering a tall pot

The rule is the same: water when the surface feels dry, until it runs from the bottom, and never leave the pot standing in water (Iowa State, University of Delaware). A tree is usually sold in a heavier, larger pot that is hard to carry to the sink, so the saucer matters more: Delaware empties any water still in the saucer a few hours after watering, and Utah State University Extension says standing water left in a decorative sleeve rots the roots. The watering guide has the full method.

After the holidays

Here the sources run out. Every extension plan we read for keeping a poinsettia starts by cutting it back hard in late winter or spring, to 4 to 6 inches above the soil for Iowa State. That is written for a bushy pot plant; on a tree it would take off the head and most of the trunk. No extension source we read gives a plan for keeping the tree form into a second year. We found no Texas A&M, UF/IFAS or Clemson source on training a poinsettia tree at home.

What the sources do support: keep it as a green houseplant through winter in good light, as Utah State does with any poinsettia, or compost it when it looks tired, which Iowa State says is fine for a plant grown to be temporary. If you want to try for color again, the after-Christmas guide gives the extension calendars for the fall dark nights, which do not depend on the plant’s shape.

Common mistakes

• Carrying it home unwrapped. Iowa State says brief freezing air can blacken the leaves.
• A spot in a traffic path or by a door. The branches are brittle (NC State, Iowa State) and drafts drop leaves (Iowa State).
• Leaving water in the cover of a heavy pot. Standing water rots the roots (Utah State, Delaware).