Poinsettia

It may have crossed your mind that I did not blip my poinsettia over Christmas despite bragging about its size over the summer. The good news is that I did keep it alive and this leaf at 1.5cm is new growth. The bad news is that I did not realise that you have to treat the plant in a particular way in order to produce red leaves. This is because I never kept one alive before for a whole year (yet alone trebling the size!). Apparently it needs 13 to 16 hours a day of total darkness for 40 days for the foliage to change. By the time I realised this it was too late to achieve the distinctive red colour. Maybe next year!