This is a poinsettia? I don’t think so.

As I mentioned previously, there has been continued improvement in the quality, the realism, of artificial flowers. Production techniques have been developed to manufacture faux blooms that increasingly resemble the real thing. There is a web site, hibiscusflorals.com, which has published an article that defines the quality grades of artificial flowers. There are numerous commercial sites on the web that have adopted these standards in promoting their own products, so the Hibiscus scale has become influential among the trade. This scale recognizes six grades of artificial flowers.  We are going to look at specimens that typify the standards of each grade, as I understand them, and you will see what to look for in appraising the quality of the stems and arrangements being offered for sale. Like any product, higher quality correlates with higher cost.

Example of a grade 1 specimen: Poinsettia

Picture of a poorly molded stem.

Example number 1 is a poinsettia purchased from a dollar store. This sad example resembles a living plant in no discernible way. It mimics the red and green leaves that characterize the poinsettia, but the colors are too pale and not authentic. The fabric used to form the leaves is so coarsely woven that light clearly passes through. Further, the leaves are frayed and creased, their outline is not accurately cut and they lack the rigidity to look natural. The means for attaching them to the stem are crude plastic devices of poor design and manufacture. The stem itself , at right, is a piece of crudely molded plastic. The close up photo of the stem shows that excess plastic was extruded through the seam of the mold, creating what is called flash, and no finishing was done to remove this imperfection. This production flaw indicates that either the temperature of the plastic was not controlled when injected into the mold or that the mold was worn and did not seal tightly.

This photo shows a calyx, which
 is not an actual part of the
poinsettia's natural structure.

Now let’s examine the biological accuracy of this specimen. There are not enough leaves. The poinsettia is a lush plant, while this artificial has only two leaves on the stem  (Of course, certain conditions will affect the vigor of a plant, but I do not think that this specimen was manufactured to illustrate that point.) Most significantly, the red “blossom” atop the stem is contained within a calyx that sets it apart from the leaves. Certain varieties of plants have a calyx, a cup like structure of green petals, called sepals, which lie at the base of the blossom.  However, the poinsettia does not have a calyx. The red “flowers” of the poinsettia are actually leaves that develop coloration due to carefully timed exposure to light. They are called bracts.

This specimen is poorly manufactured and is not anatomically correct. These factors contribute to the placement of this artificial flower in the first, or lowest quality, grade of artificial flowers.

Next week we will analyze a grade 2 specimen.