Horticulture quiz for the holidays – Home and Style – The Buffalo News

How do you score?

http://www.buffalonews.com/life/home-style/article656871.ece

Horticulture quiz for the holidays

Many of you say you enjoy my quizzes, and some even boast about (or confess) your scores. So I will once again check your knowledge about holiday gift plants.

Answers and explanations are at the end.

What is that?

1. Name the holiday plant, originating in Mexico, that has brightly colored bracts (red, cream, pink, marbled or speckled) and tiny yellow flowers in the center.

2. What flowering bulb plant is a type of narcissus, doesn’t require cold-forcing and is usually grown indoors with its roots in water?

3. What nonhardy evergreen is sold as a miniature holiday tree, but in the Southern Hemisphere could grow over 100 feet tall?

4. Name the flowering plant, often sold now as a 4- inch bulb, that produces a 12- to 20-inch stalk and a circle of large trumpet-shaped flowers.

5. What kind of Christmas tree has slightly rubbery needles, usually bluish-green, that smell like tangerines when you break them?

True or false?

6. Hollies, mistletoe, bittersweet, raspberries and Jerusalem cherries all have poisonous fruit or berries.

7. Christmas trees are an important New York State crop and an environmentally sound use of farmland.

8. After amaryllis finish blooming, you should cut off the stalk but let the leaves keep growing —water when dry—through the spring and summer.

9. Poinsettias, cyclamen and lilies are all dangerous to keep in your house if you have cats or little children.

10. Cyclamen are not difficult to keep and rebloom, but for success you should keep

your house on the cool side and let them stand in a tray of water so the roots stay moist.

11. Holiday evergreen wreaths are made from fresh-cut greens, so you should keep them warm; a good location is between the inner and outer (storm) door where it gets sunshine.

12. To force a Christmas cactus into bloom, expose it to cool temperatures (in a cool room or outside as long as temperatures aren’t freezing) for a few weeks.

13. To restart last year’s amaryllis, you should cut off the leaves in the fall to shock the bulb into pushing up a new flower stalk.

14. Poinsettias are started in Western New York greenhouses in October.

15. Rosemary and lavender are fragrant herbs that you can keep indoors, but they require excellent light and increased humidity.

16. Hellebores, frosty fern and gaultheria are really perennials that are sold for holiday decorating.

Multiple choice

17. Poinsettias are a challenging crop for growers. Why? (a) They must monitor and control diseases and insects; (b) Weather fluctuations require careful greenhouse temperature control, and severe cold means high heating costs; (c) They are a labor- intensive crop; (d) All of the above.

18. To prevent the Christmas tree from dropping all its needles, you should (a) keep it warm; (b) make a fresh butt-cut and keep it in water; (c) cut the butt, then let it seal over before you put it in the stand; (d) give it aspirin if it dries out.

19. To get a poinsettia to flower again, (a) water and fertilize outdoors all summer and then put it in a closet or completely dark room every night for several weeks; (b) let it go dormant in summer and start to water and fertilize in fall; (c) plant it outside to perennialize; (d) it’s impossible to get a poinsettia to color up again or reflower.

20. If you want a living Christmas tree to plant after the holidays, you should (a) dig a wide hole now and stuff it with leaves; (b) put your compost/topsoil mix into a warm garage so you have it for planting time; (c) keep the tree as cool as possible and keep it inside as a Christmas tree for less than a week; (d) all of the above.

21. Bonus question: How many professional growers produce poinsettias in Western New York? (a) fewer than five; (b) five to 10; (c) more than 10.

Answers and explanations

1. Poinsettia.

2. Paperwhite.

3. Norfolk Island pine.

4. Amaryllis.

5. Concolor fir.

6. False. Raspberries aren’t poisonous, but the others are.

7. True. Buy locally grown trees; they’re better for the economy and environment than fake trees. See christmastreesny.org.

8. True. In summer, fertilize too.

9. False. Poinsettias are not poisonous but eating many pounds would make you vomit (and the sap can irritate some people’s skins; keep away from eyes). Only cyclamen tubers (under the soil) are poisonous. Lilies of all kinds are indeed very poisonous to cats.

10. False. Cyclamen are not difficult to keep, but never let them stand in water as they develop rot diseases easily. They do prefer cool temperatures.

11. False. Keep your wreaths cool, and put them on the outside door. They cook behind a glass outer door.

12. True. They bud in response to seasonal temperature drop or darkening.

13. True. It hurts to cut those leaves back, but it works.

14. False. Most growers plant the plugs in August.

15. True.

16. False. Trick question. Two are hardy here but frosty fern is not.

17. (d) Tough crop. Buy locally grown.

18. (b) Water, water, water.

19. (a) but take half a point for (d) because realistically it’s very difficult to reproduce a poinsettia’s colorful bracts in home conditions. Leave it to the growers!

20. (d) Do all those things, reacclimate the tree gradually from indoors to outdoors, store it in an unheated but protected place, and plant in late winter or early spring. Water well whenever the ground is unfrozen.

21. (BONUS) (c) New York State Flower Industries reports more than 10 growers in Western New York.

Sally Cunningham is a garden writer, lecturer and consultant.