According to the Greek legend, the plant was named after the nymph called Amaryllis who fell in love with a shepherd called Alteo. Due to unrequited love, Amaryllis pierced her heart with a golden arrow and start spreading drops of blood along the way toward Alteo’s cottage for 30 nights in a row. On the thirtieth day, beautiful flowers appeared from the soil covered with her blood and melted the “ice” around Alteo’s heart, who finally fell in love with Amaryllis.
Free vintage Poinsettia Drawings and other Christmas Flowers.
Poinsettias are probably the most popular of all the Christmas flowers. Over 35 million of them are sold in the US every year. That is a quarter of all potted plant sales.
My mother loved to decorate with poinsettias and would have several plants as part of our Christmas decorations. The main centerpiece on the Christmas table always included poinsettias.
She liked to decorate with poinsettias, not just because of their beautiful festive red color but probably because we lived in the tropics at the time. Poinsettias are plants you associate with warmer climates so they seemed more appropriate with our Christmas decorations, than plants that you associate with colder climates such as holly and mistletoe.
Personally, my favorite Christmas flowers aren’t poinsettias but Amaryllis. I just love their elegant lily-like blooms. Other vintage Christmas flower illustrations included in this collection include amaryllis, Christmas cacti, and Christmas roses.
To download any of the following Christmas flower drawings, just click on the title above that illustration. A higher resolution image will open as a new window in your browser.
The Vintage Poinsettia Drawings
Poinsettias originally came from Central America, mainly Mexico. They were named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States Minister to Mexico, who first brought the plant to the US in the 1820s. Before that, the plants were more commonly known as “Mexican flame flower” or “painted leaf“.
Today, the poinsettia is known in Mexico as Flor de Nochebuena, meaning Christmas Eve Flower.
The red “petals” on the plant aren’t actually flowers but colored leaves called a bract. The flowers are the less impressive little yellow buds in the center of each collection of leaves.
There is a Mexican folktale about how the plant became associate with Christmas. Legend says a girl in 16th Century Mexico was too poor to provide a gift for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday and was inspired by an angel to gather weeds from the roadside and place them in front of the church altar. Crimson blossoms sprouted from the weeds and became poinsettias.
Since then they have become a popular Christmas display in Mexican churches, The star-shaped leaf pattern is said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and the red color represents the blood sacrifice of Jesus’s crucifixion.
Curtis’s Botanical Magazine Poinsettia Drawings
This vibrant poinsettia illustration is from the famous Curtis’s Botanical Magazine v.63 published in 1836.
