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Paul Ecke Sr. (center) harvesting field poinsettias.
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Of particular interest to Albert Ecke, and even more so to his son Paul, was the tall, leggy red plant that grew wild throughout the area. A native of Mexico, the plant had been introduced into the United States in the early 1800s by Joel Roberts Poinsett. The poinsettia's yearly cycle of blooming during the winter, near the holiday season, gave Paul the notion that this would make an ideal official holiday flower. But the question remained: how to promote and market a plant that most people had never heard of or even seen, let alone associate it with the holiday season?
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