"Gilding the lily" so to speak

[urbpan]

In Stop and Shop, I encountered this: live poinsettia plants dusted with glitter. Poinsettia is a nice enough plant, I suppose. A native of South and Central America its red bracts and green leaves have earned it a place alongside holly and yew as vegetable symbols of yuletide. I saw a huge poinsettia plant in an urban yard in Quito, Ecuador, a shrub as big as a typical rhododendron in New England. But in North America, you can almost forget that poinsettia is a living thing--if it weren't for the occasional (false) hysteria about it being a poisonous menace, it would blend into the background of Santas and blinking lights.

And so here it is completely relegated to the role of tacky Christmas decoration; its marketers were not satisfied with its own charms, and so the decoration is itself decorated.



On this day in 365 Urban Species: Green shield lichen. The lichen pictured on this post was on a tree which has since been cut down.