2000 OSU/OFA POINSETTIA TRIAL RESULTS by Dr. Claudio Pasian (Ohio State University) and Dr. Steve Carver (Ohio Florists' Association) Five firms generously agreed to grow plants for the trials: Lakewood Greenhouse in Toledo, Dill's Greenhouse in Columbus, Barco's in Medina, Bostdorff Greenhouse Acres in Bowling Green, and Diefenbacher Greenhouse in Cincinnati. Each grower received rooted poinsettia cuttings from five breeders who donated plant material: Dummen USA Inc, Paul Ecke Ranch, Fischer USA Inc, and Oglevee Ltd. and Selecta Klemm/HMA. Each grower followed its own cultural procedures. Planting and pinching were done during a 10 day window. Cultivar evaluation open houses were held November 16, 17, 20, and 21 at the five grower locations. Like the previous trials, consumers were invited to evaluate all cultivars. One plant per grower, per cultivar was shipped to the OSU greenhouses on November 21. This consumer evaluation was done with the help of Horticultural Onor Society Pi Alpha Xi through its annual poinsettia fundraiser sale on November 30, December 1 and 2, the Society invited its customers to evaluate the plants in our trial. In this issue, we report the results of the consumer evaluation. It is important to note that the opinions were given by poinsettia consumers who came to buy from the students. Grower evaluations will be presented next month. As we did with growers, we asked customers to evaluate each group of plants (cultivars) using a scale 1 - 5 (1= like the least; 5= like the most). This evaluation is presented in Table 1. In addition, after the grading we asked consumers to select no more than 3 cultivars that they would take home, assuming the price were right. These results are presented in Table 2. Note that the two rankings do not coincide. This may be an indication that consumers are attracted to cultivars that are different and unique while others prefer the traditional look. The cultivar listings based on consumer "would buy" favorites, add a new aspect to the trial results. Three of the top four selections are novelties; only three of the top eleven cultivar were red. 'Sonora White Glitter' was far and away the top pick among the cultivars (Table 2), but only in the middle of the ratings pack (Table 1). There were similar disparities between the two tables for several of the other novelties, including 'Monet Twilight', 'Holly Point', 'Winter Rose Dark Red', 'Heirloom Peach', and 'Plum Pudding'. What does this mean? A hint of the meaning can be gleaned by looking at the standard deviations for the cultivar ratings (Table 1). Standard deviation (std dev) is a measure of the degree to which individual scores are spread over the possible range of scores. The smaller the std dev, the closer the individual scores fall around the average of the cultivar. Conversely, the larger the std dev, the more the scores are spread out over the range of possible scores. For example, 'Sonora White Glitter' had the largest std dev in this study. There were many participants that rated it a "4" or a "5", while many others rated it a "1" or a "2". On average, the rating was only a "3.5", but most of those that rated it highly liked it well enough to list it as one of their favorites. This limited "off the bench" quality cultivar trial supports the results of other studies and common wisdom that reds continue to be the poinsettia color preference. There are, however, distinct niches for non-reds and especially some of the newer novelties.