If Christmas stylesetters were asked to name the most celebrated seasonal flower, most would readily pinpoint the poinsettia. The hardy, pointy-leafed blooming plant often festoons Charleston mantels and entryways in its signature eye-popping holiday red.
Still, many may not be able to track the origins of the poinsettia’s enduring popularity in this country to the Holy City — and what that journey can tell us about how America’s early leaders and how they leveraged their accelerating purchase on the world stage.
‘The poinsettia reimagined’
When it comes to the poinsettia, the clue is in the name, or namesake as the case may be. That is Joel Roberts Poinsett, the Charleston native who was an antebellum confidant of Andrew Jackson and former member of the South Carolina Legislature. He introduced poinsettias to America with the aim of making major hay from the fetching flower.
On Nov. 1, The Poinsettia Reimagined: Art, Migration, and the Legacy of Joel Roberts Poinsett is a new exhibition making its world premiere at Charleston County Public Library’s Main Branch Auditorium, before it subsequently travels to other locales. It serves as the opening chapter of a multi-year international commemoration leading to the 2028 bicentennial of the poinsettia’s introduction to the United States.
Together with related programming, the exhibition considers the aesthetic allure of flowers — while also exploring what the trajectory of one fetching flower can tell us about the American way.
“Our exhibition brings together a body of work that reinterprets the poinsettia as both a botanical subject and a vessel of historical meaning,” said curator Kim Cliett Long, project administrator of Jonathan Green’s Maritime Cultural Center at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
The exhibition’s anchor can be seen in two original paintings by Green that envision the poinsettia as a symbol of cultural continuity. Those are joined by works of contemporary artists with connections to the Lowcountry and beyond who extend this through their own visual languages.
Each artist approaches the poinsettia differently — some through realism, others through abstraction — but all explore how its history, nature and human creativity intertwine. The exhibition will also feature an interpretive installation by Lisa Hays Holmes of Tiger Lily.
The idea for the show sprang from a recent trip that Long and Green took to Mexico, where Poinsett first came upon the plant. It prompted them to research the intertwined histories of art, diplomacy and the maritime world. Long, a scholar and author of The First Marketplace: Africa’s Role in Shaping World Trade, has spent recent years traveling port cities around the globe to paint a more comprehensive picture on the agency of maritime centers and the role of the African diaspora.
“Our intent is to connect indigenous Mexican traditions, African diasporic narratives and Charleston’s maritime heritage,” she said, adding that viewers will encounter the poinsettia not as decoration but as a living emblem of movement, identity and resilience.
Shedding new light on Charleston’s global botanical legacy (which was arguably first established by Poinsett’s predecessor, the celebrated 18th-century French botanist Andre Michaux), the exhibition’s featured paintings merge maritime history with botanical imagery, as well as depictions of Gullah and coastal life that are infused with color and rhythm and works that elevate the poinsettia from a plant of commerce to a carrier of ancestral memory.
Archival narratives also connect Poinsett’s diplomatic and scientific work with the lives of the African-descended families linked to his legacy. Among them was Peter Poinsette, the father of Septima Poinsette Clark, the civil rights movement activist crowned by the Rev. Martin Luther King as the “Mother of the Movement,” representing a vast single-generation leap from enslavement to empowerment.
Flowers, guns and money
The exhibition is also concurrent with the 2025 Charleston Reads, the annual citywide event focusing on a single book. This year’s selection is Flowers, Guns and Money: Joel Roberts Poinsett and the Paradoxes of American Patriotism by Lindsay Schakenbach Regele. It reveals an America defined by opportunity and violence, freedom and slavery, nationalism and self-interest.
In it, the author delves deep into the life and times of the South Carolina Congressman and U.S. Secretary of War, who also helped found the Smithsonian. While serving as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, the enterprising statesman became enthralled with the botanical specimen, hatching a plan to bring it to America.
Flowers, Guns and Money also will be a featured title in this year’s Charleston Literary Festival program, with Regele in conversation with Long on Nov. 15 at Dock Street Theatre.
“The poinsettia story ultimately positions Charleston as a crossroads in American culture—a city where the Atlantic world’s exchanges of plants, people and ideas converged,” said Long. It shows that Charleston’s influence has always extended beyond its shores, shaping how art, science, and humanity connect across the globe.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Exhibition opens Nov. 1, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., and runs through Nov. 30. Charleston County Library Main Library Auditorium, 68 Calhoun St.
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