If people know the name Joel Roberts Poinsett today, it is likely because of the red and green poinsettia plant.
In the late 1820s, while serving as the first ambassador from the U.S. to Mexico, Poinsett clipped samples of the plant known in Spanish as the “flor de nochebuena,” or flower of Christmas Eve, from the Mexican state of Guerrero. He then introduced it to the U.S. on a trip home from Mexico.
The plant has been named poinsettia ever since.
But much like the history of the U.S., Poinsett had a complex and troubling past.
An ambitious politician, financial investor and enslaver, Poinsett was a secret agent for the U.S. government in South America who fought for the Chilean army against Spain during Chile’s War for Independence in the early 1800s.
A confidant of President Andrew Jackson, Poinsett also served as U.S. secretary of war under President Martin Van Buren and oversaw the ignominy of the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation and deadly march of Cherokee people from the South to reservations in the West during the 1830s.
And yet Poinsett, an avid botanist who brought scores of other plants to the U.S., also helped found an organization that led to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.