There are so many beautiful types of Christmas flowers available to use for your bouquets, arrangements, wreaths, swags and centerpieces.

Azaleas, cyclamen, Christmas cacti, and poinsettias are all simply gorgeous, but keeping them at their best requires a small investment in time and effort.

These particular Christmas flowers will fare best under cool conditions.

In fact, these plants will flower best and longer if they are kept cool. You can prolong the bloom of your Christmas flowers past the holidays if you keep them in the sort of environment that is most conducive to flowering.

In general, temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit are optimum for these plants. However, poinsettias might be happier being just a bit warmer.

You don’t want the plants to get too cold at night. You should also be careful and not set them too close to a heater or heating duct or fireplace, because they will dry out under those conditions.

Here are a few tips on caring for some of two popular types of Christmas flowers:

Poinsettias:

Poinsettias can last for a long time if cared for properly. These Christmas flowers, which are actually bracts, are colorful and showy. They thrive in bright light but don’t place them in direct sun as this can be harmful. They want to be moist, but don’t over-water them. When the top of the potting soil feels dry to the touch, water thoroughly.

Be careful not to place poinsettias where they will be in a draught, or too close to a heat source such as a fireplace or heating duct, because this can dry the soil and plants too much. Poinsettias like being misted with water, and this will help to keep the flowers at their best.

Cyclamen:

Indoor cyclamen make gorgeous Christmas flowers and will put on an extravagant display of blooms for several months if tended to carefully. Always select a cyclamen with lots of flower buds and nice, healthy leaves.

These beautiful plants are happiest in cool, bright conditions. Avoid placing them in direct sunlight, however, or too close to heat sources.

Be judicious in watering, cyclamen dislike being overwatered.

You should remove spent flowers from the plants to keep them tidy. When blooming is complete, the leaves will turn yellow. Keep watering sparingly until the plant goes into summer dormancy. When the cyclamen begins showing new growth, resume watering and feeding for another season of beautiful Christmas flowers.

Poinsettias and indoor cyclamen are fantastic Christmas flowers that will reward you with abundant blooms if you care for them correctly.

Fresh flower arrangements are always beautiful and add so much ambience to your home regardless of the season, but flowers at Christmas really add that extra touch that says “Merry Christmas!” to all who enter.

There are several beautiful types of flowers that are considered traditional for Christmas.

One of these is the poinsettia.

Poinsettias have long been one of the best loved fresh flowers for the yuletide holidays. A deep red color is the norm, but variations of color have been developed through the years, and now poinsettias can be found in other shades as well.

The poinsettia is indigenous to Mexico and Guatemala, and has a rather interesting story associated with it.

The poinsettia’s association with the Christmas holidays is said to have begun during the 16^th century in Mexico, when a young girl who was too poor to provide a gift to Jesus was told by an angel to gather weeds from the roadside, and place them at the altar. From those roadside weeds, legend has it that crimson blossoms appeared and thus the beautiful poinsettia came into being.

Contrary to urban legend, poinsettias are not truly toxic. Ingestion of the plant may cause diarrhea and vomiting in both animals and humans, and if the sap from a poinsettia gets in the eye it can cause temporary blindness.

However, the poinsettia plant–while having some unpleasant side effects— is not fatal if ingested as we have been led to believe by folklore.

When buying poinsettia flowers for your Christmas decorating, here are a few tips that will help you choose wisely:

• The plant should be approximately 2-½ times taller than the diameter of the container it is growing in.
• Don’t buy poinsettia plants that are displayed in paper or plastic sleeves, as this causes them to deteriorate quickly.
• Don’t choose poinsettias that are wilted or drooping as they will begin dropping leaves and be unattractive, or they might be diseased.
• Choose plants that are dark green all the way down to the soil line.
• If you keep poinsettias outside, be sure to cover them at night if the temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Choose bracts that are completely covered without a lot of green around the edges.

Poinsettias are perhaps the best known and most popular of all Christmas flowers, and will lend a lovely, festive look to your holiday décor!

To many prospective brides and grooms, a Christmas wedding just makes sense. Friends and family that live out of town have come home for the holidays and won’t have to make a special trip for a wedding. School is out for a couple of weeks. Everybody is in a happy, holiday mood—so why not take advantage of these circumstances and have a Christmas wedding?

Naturally, a wedding anytime of the year calls for flower arrangements. Christmas flowers arrangements lend themselves quite nicely to decorating for a beautiful wedding!

You may choose to go with the traditional red, green and white…..red and white….or other colors of your choice. But the traditional Christmas flowers can be counted on to provide a wealth of decorating ideas for lovely wedding arrangements.

For example, masses of potted red poinsettias and garlands of holly would be stunning wedding flowers!

Also, red and white roses with baby’s breath and evergreen boughs would be fabulous.

You will only be limited by the scope of your imagination when it comes to decorating the church and reception area with Christmas wedding flowers.

Many brides love the look of tiny, twinkling fairy lights woven through evergreen garlands. Faux snow, once pretty chintzy and tacky, has been improved over the years and would look gorgeous liberally applied to evergreen decorations with red and white roses.

Christmas wedding flower arrangements seem made to order for using lots of pretty, flickering candles, also.

There are many beautiful, fragrant evergreens to choose from as accents for Christmas wedding flower arrangements and decorations.

Blue spruce, for instance, with clusters of red holly berries and white roses makes a breathtaking flower arrangement for a Christmas wedding. You may also use pine boughs, fir, balsam, cedar or almost any evergreen.

Mistletoe is another plant that is popular for Christmas wedding flower decorations. Tall, elegant red or white Amaryllis with their strap-like foliage and huge trumpet shaped flowers are especially beautiful to use in Christmas wedding flowers, too.

Small potted evergreen trees can be strung with tiny clear fairy lights and dusted with artificial snow.

Regardless of which Christmas flowers you choose to decorate for a wedding during the holidays, you will be assured of having arrangements that add grace, elegance and beauty to the ceremony.