Interesting thread Neil. Very close to me is a wonderful grower who this time of year has 6 very large greenhouses full of poinsettias. He mainly sells wholesale but will retail to those who stop by. I went last week to get some red ones,the only kind I ever have,and he was totally sold out. The only plants he had left were row upon row of whites,those speckled faded looking plants and lots of pinks. This is the first time that has happened since I've been going. You may well be on to something.

Last year a friend brought me 2 huge pink ones.
They were lovely but I had to put them in the sun room because of Sassi, she eats everything in sight.
I'm not a big fan of poinsettias, I think they are pretty but
just never bought any for myself.

I noticed that the local Home Depot garden center only had red, white and red speckled ones. No pinks this year.

I've carried and grown the peachy ones, bright yellow ones, variegated leafed ones, speckled ones, and dusky purple ones. For the most part, they all get their fifteen minutes of fame, sell like hotcakes for a few seasons and go back to obscurity. Selling an orange poinsettia at Christmas is about like selling a pink pumpkin at Halloween.

In the mid-eighties.........everyone was decorating their homes in dusty rose. So, we sold a lot of pink. I used to sell heavily to florists, and that's when I moved a lot of lemon yellow to high end orders because it was hard to get, and a novelty. When I stopped selling to florists, I never had another order for yellow.

So why mostly red this year? It's nostalgic, and in times of economic depression, that's what people want for the most part. They want their Christmas to remind them of happier times, when they were kids and that meant the poinsettias were red. The economy plays into it in other ways too. It's called 'reduce the shrink'. Red is a better seller and the main crop of the mix. Pastels used to be perhaps 25% of my market. It's dropped steadily for at least five years and accounts for less than ten percent of my sales this year. Nobody is ordering them on the wholesale level. I noticed last year when I went in to town right before Christmas day..........nearly all the unsold points on display were pastels. So, my guess the stores are playing it safe. Since so many are sold through box stores, which means the wholesale growers don't get paid for any if they don't sell, the growers are also playing it safe. In this case, poo runs uphill.

It's going through the whole production/distribution chain. I was talking to my seed broker yesterday and asked whether I can afford to wait in case I need to supplement what I already bought. My seed order went in last August, and I have some of my spring line growing on at present. So, it's late and I was told vegetable seed availability is already tight. It's not like less seed was produced, or demand necessarily increased. It's about holding down speculation orders on a perishable product.

I have also noticed that red poinsettias are the most popular color this year.

I've always bought the red ones...in fact I bought three yesterday. I love them and they say Christmas to me nowadays since I don't put up a tree anymore.

I've only been to the Home Depot so far, and they have mostly red with a few vanilla thrown in. I may end up browsing the chi-chi Chalet nursery at some point, and I'll be surprised if they don't have a few that are purple or extravagantly speckled or something. They also have live reindeer that I always feel a little bad for, what with the slush and the view of a speedy stretch of Skokie Road.