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.

However, lovely though they may be, you might want to think about going beyond poinsettias for your holiday flower arrangements this year.

There are a lot of other truly beautiful Christmas flowers!

The traditional Christmas colors of red, white and green can be found in gorgeous abundance on many other plants and flowers besides the well known and much loved poinsettia.

For example, red and white roses make fabulous Christmas flowers, and are favored for holiday weddings, as well as home decorating.

Azaleas make charming Christmas flowers! The red and white varieties sold as blooming potted plants for the holidays are usually Belgian Indicas that will provide abundant blooms for several weeks.

Amaryllis are breathtaking Christmas flowers—tall, stately, elegant and oh-so-beautiful! Huge trumpet shaped blooms on narrow stems make Amaryllis perfect to arrange in the center of an arrangement; with smaller, shorter flowers and/or greenery surrounding them.

White Chrysanthemums combined with red carnations or any other red flowers make for a stunning arrangement of Christmas flowers.

Red and white carnations are charming with ivy and baby’s breath to provide the usual colors of Christmas.

Big red tulips are a holiday favorite when combined with paperwhite narcissus and greenery such as mistletoe or holly with its cheerful red berries!

Caladium are traditionally grown outdoors, but with some care the bulbs can be forced into bloom just in time to brighten your holiday décor. Caladiums are available in many colors, but the beautiful reds, greens and whites…plus the variations of these colors….make enchanting Christmas flowers.

Christmas cacti are showy and always dependable for loads of Christmas flowers. These tropical type plants can live for many, many years with proper care and will burst into bloom for your Yuletide decorating!

Miniature roses make lovely Christmas flowers and lend themselves to decorating your home for the holidays. These plants are usually potted when sold, and you can plant them outside after the holidays for years of pretty flowers in your perennial beds.

Freesia are among the most fragrant of all bulbs, with beautiful white flowers and a scent that is just heavenly. These bulbs can be forced into bloom along with paper whites and tulips for elegant Christmas flowers.

So, do have the old standby poinsettias, but have some fun trying out some other Christmas flowers, too!

Christmas flowers can be fresh cut bouquets or dried arrangements, silk, or potted bulbs and/or plants. Regardless of which types you choose for your decorating, rest assured that they will provide beauty and charm to your décor!

There are endless ways to use Christmas flowers. Here are a few suggestions for decorating your holiday home this season with Christmas flowers:

• Evergreen boughs, either real or artificial, look beautiful when they’re swagged from a mantel with dried roses of deep Christmas red and white liberally entwined among the greenery.
• Big, bountiful bouquets of green holly with bright red berries make a statement all by themselves, but adding a few long stemmed red and white roses or other flowers lends added Christmas cheer and color.
• Potted Poinsettias in festive shades of red, white or pink add some pizzazz to your holiday theme, especially when you wrap the pots in brightly colored foil paper and wrap it all in a great big poufy bow in Christmas colors!
• Baskets and sleds crafted from grapevines or twigs are so festive with Christmas flower arrangements inside! You might add Styrofoam covered with a layer of dried moss as a base, and then add pretty silk Christmas flowers to make your holiday statement.
• Wreaths can add so much to your entrance door or inside on any wall you choose to hang one! You can make a living wreath with dampened sphagnum moss wired to a wreath frame, then fresh cut Christmas flowers and greenery all around for a splash of color.
• Don’t forget your holiday dinner table! Christmas flowers can make any meal a festive affair laden with good cheer. Be sure to use a rather low arrangement, so that you and your guests can see over it during the meal.
• Stair rails and banisters were made to be decorated! These can look ever-so-festive with the addition of some garlands of greenery and pretty red and white Christmas flowers.
• A few pots of Amaryllis with their huge, regal blooms will lend an air of distinction to your Christmas flowers for decorating! They come in a wide range of colors, with red or white being favorites for the holidays.

Decorating with Christmas flowers is a great way for your home to say “Happy Holidays!”

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!