Poor John Jay. He’s an important founding father. But he’s often overlooked or forgotten. And today he’s displaced by poinsettias, the Christmas season’s ubiquitous potted plants.

You see, today’s #stampoftheday was going to be a 15-cent stamp, issued on December 12, 1958 that pictured Jay, who was born on December 12, 1745. I would have written about how Jay helped negotiate and signed the treaty that ended the American Revolution, helped draft the Constitution, wrote some of the Federalist Papers (along with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison), served as the second Governor of New York and was the first Chief Justice of the United States.

The last item probably would have sent me on a tangential rumination about the shameless (and apparently failed) coup d’état launched by our soon-to-be ex-president and his allies. And somewhere in there, I would have noted that my sister-in-law and my niece both graduated from John Jay High School in northern Westchester County.

But I’m not going to do any of that.

Instead, because today is National Poinsettia Day, the #stampoftheday is a 1964 image of a poinsettia that was one of four plants associated with Christmas shown on a Christmas stamp issued in November 1964. (The other plants are mistletoe, holly, and evergreen.)

I’m going to table the question of why, when and how the Post Office started issuing Christmas stamps and instead focus on how it Americans came to spend more than $250 million a year to buy more than 70 million poinsettias, most of them purchased in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Poinsettias are large, spindly shrubs with small flowers that grow naturally in Central America, usually on Pacific-facing slopes in steep canyons. Aztec people used the plant to produce red dye and as an antipyretic medication.

The plant’s association with Christmas supposedly began in 16th-century Mexico and involves a girl, commonly called Pepita or María, who was too poor to provide a gift for her church’s Christmas celebration. Inspired by an angel, she instead gathered and placed weeds, which were poinsettias, in front of the church altar, where they bloomed. Whatever the source, starting in the 17th century, Franciscan friars in Mexico included the plants in their Christmas decorations. They supposedly told congregants that the plant’s star-shaped leaf pattern symbolized the Star of Bethlehem while the red color represented Jesus’s blood.

The man responsible for bringing these plants to America was Joel Roberts Poinsett, a physician, diplomat, and amateur botanist who in 1822 was appointed as the US’s first envoy to newly-independent Mexico. He sent some plants to his home in South Carolina, where they were propagated; given to friends and local botanical gardens; and named after him.

The plant didn’t become common, however, until the 20th century, when three generations of the Ecke family transformed everything connected with them. In 1900, Albert Ecke, a German immigrant, came with his family to Los Angeles which was supposed to be a stop on their way to Fiji, where they planned to open a health spa., However, attracted by what he found in LA he decided to stay and be a farmer. Within a few years he had a dairy farm and fruit orchard in Eagle Rock, now a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles.

Ecke was fascinated by the area’s wild poinsettias, which had brilliant red bracts and were one of the few plants that bloomed in November and December. He persuaded large-scale growers to adopt them into their rotations during the offseason and set up a roadside stand on Sunset Boulevard to sell them.

Albert’s son, Paul Ecke, Sr., went further, moving the family out of the increasingly competitive dairy and orchard businesses. He licensed technology from a German amateur flower breeder that allowed him to turn the delicate and gangly weed into a sturdy and voluptuous potted plant. He moved the family’s operations away from aster growing LA to rural Encinitas, between Los Angeles and San Diego. There, he developed new varieties and to make sure these would last, he created a “torture chamber” that simulated real-world conditions, such as people who forgot to water their plants or those who put them too close their fireplace.

In the 1960s, his son, Paul Ecke Jr., expanded the business yet again. He began growing the plants in greenhouses and greatly expanded their distribution by shipping cuttings by air instead of sending mature plants by rail. Once described by Mike Anton in the LA Times as “an inexhaustible promoter who would’ve given P.T. Barnum competition,” the younger Ecke showered television networks with free poinsettias from Thanksgiving to Christmas and sang their praises on programs such as “The Tonight Show” and Bob Hope’s holiday specials.

Thanks to all these efforts by the 1980s, poinsettias were ubiquitous and the Ecke family had a virtual monopoly on them. But then, Paul Ecke III told NPR a few years ago. “a graduate student” (named John Dole, who now teaches at NC State) “was fooling around and learned that you could graft poinsettias and get them to branch.” Moreover, the student published his findings, which made them available to anyone who wanted to use them. “Imagine Col. Sanders with his 11 herbs and spices laid bare,” Anton wrote. “Or Coca-Cola with its recipe splashed across the Internet. That’s how Ecke felt.”

Competitors began using the research to develop their own, lower-cost farms in Latin America. They found a ready market in fast-growing discount stores and big box outlets such as Home Depot that began selling poinsettias as loss leaders designed to entice customers into their stores. The Ecke family responded by moving more of its operations to Central America. Nevertheless, in 2012, even though he claimed the firm still controlled about 70 percent of the poinsettia market in the US (and 50 percent worldwide), Paul Ecke III decided to sell the family business. “When I was growing up we were a big company and today we are on the small side through no fault of our own.,” he told a local “Patch” website. “What’s going on is consolidation, and that’s natural in all industries.”

Nevertheless, he admitted, “I don’t know what it’s going to feel like…this Christmas. I grew up with poinsettias all around me, even before I was born.”

Meanwhile, poor John Jay will have to wait for another day.

Stay safe, be well, fight for justice, and work for peace.