Editing Poinsettia (section)

===American industry===
Albert Ecke emigrated from Germany to [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] in 1900, opening a dairy and orchard in the [[Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California|Eagle Rock]] area. He became intrigued by the plant and sold them from street stands. His son, Paul Ecke, developed the grafting technique, but it was the third generation of Eckes, Paul Ecke Jr., who was responsible for advancing the association between the plant and Christmas.<ref name=lat/>

Besides changing the market from mature plants shipped by rail to [[cutting (plant)|cutting]]s sent by air, he sent free plants to television stations for them to display on air from Thanksgiving to Christmas. He also appeared on television programs like ''[[The Tonight Show]]'' and [[Bob Hope]]'s Christmas specials to promote the plants.<ref name=lat>{{cite news |url=http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poinsettia23-2008dec23,0,899159.story |title=The bloom is off the poinsettia business |first=Mike |last=Anton |date=December 23, 2008 |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |access-date=December 28, 2008}}</ref>

Until the 1990s, the Ecke family, who had moved their operation to [[Encinitas, California]], in 1923, had a virtual monopoly on poinsettias owing to a technique that made their plants much more attractive. They produced a fuller, more compact plant by [[grafting]] two varieties of poinsettia together. A poinsettia left to grow on its own will naturally take an open, somewhat weedy look. The Eckes' technique made it possible to get every seedling to branch, resulting in a bushier plant.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://site.extension.uga.edu/cherokee/2015/12/poinsettia-background-on-a-christmas-tradition/ |title=Cultivating Cherokee County |website=UGA Extension |access-date=8 December 2019 |date=10 December 2015 |first=Joan |last=McFather}}</ref>

In the late 1980s, university researcher John Dole discovered the grafting method (grafting rarer densely-branched cultivars onto more common sparsely-branched cultivars) – previously known only to the Eckes – and published it.<ref>A GRAFT-TRANSMISSIBLE FACTOR IN EUPHORBIA PULCHERRIMA CAUSING PERMANENT CHANGES IN BRANCHING AND ANOTHER MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS J. Dole, H. Wilkins, ISHS Acta Horticulturae 226, 1987, https://www.actahort.org/books/226/226_34.htm {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211126235942/http://www.actahort.org/books/226/226_34.htm |date=November 26, 2021 }}</ref> This allowed competitors to flourish, particularly those using low-cost labor in [[Latin America]]. The Ecke family's business, now led by Paul Ecke III, decided to stop producing plants in the US, but as of 2008, they still served about 70 percent of the domestic market and 50 percent of the worldwide market.<ref name=lat/><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.npr.org/2017/12/22/573046507/how-poinsettias-became-synonymous-with-christmas |title=How Poinsettias Became Synonymous With Christmas |website=NPR |date=22 December 2017 |access-date=8 December 2019 |first1=Ari |last1=Shapiro |first2=Michel |last2=Martin}}</ref>