Born to wealth in South Carolina in 1779, Joel Roberts Poinsett rejected the life of a southern aristocrat and, instead, traveled the world becoming an expert in foreign affairs and an amateur botanist, bringing to North America the lovely flower now known as a poinsettia.
His travels spanned hot spots in Europe, Asia, and South America. In 1806 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Poinsett speculated that pools of petroleum might be used for fuel. In Persia, he told a great Khan about the United States and President Thomas Jefferson. In Russia, he told the empress that her country could not industrialize so long as serfs worked for free, though as a plantation owner he presumably had slaves. He later led an abolition movement.
Then in 1825, Poinsett, an avid botanist visited Taxco del Alarcon, south of Mexico City. There he saw for the first time the lovely, winter-blooming Flor de Noche Buena or Christmas flower. He sent samples back to the States where the flower immediately became popular. By 1836, the plant the Aztecs called cuetlaxochitl had another name: Poinsettia.
Although Poinsett was famed in his own time for military, diplomatic and domestic accomplishments, it is the Christmas flower for which he is commonly remembered today.