Every year, Paul Ecke III watches as the Christmas season slowly creeps from December into earlier months, infiltrating November, October and even September in extreme cases.

"Personally, I think that's not a healthy thing," says the Southern California rancher. Perhaps that's because one crucial element is always noticeably absent. "You rarely if ever see poinsettias in those Christmas displays that are out of season. When you see live poinsettias, you know that Christmas really is coming."

For most people in the Bay Area, the poinsettia is an easy and festive - if perhaps a bit old-fashioned - way to bring holiday cheer into the home.

But for Ecke III, the iconic plant is much more: It's a livelihood, a horticultural obsession and a family tradition that stretches back over a century. His ancestors single-handedly turned the poinsettia into a harbinger of Christmas, so he has a lot invested in keeping that tradition alive.

The Ecke family's connection with the poinsettia goes back to 1900, when Paul's great-grandfather Albert Ecke emmigrated to the United States from Germany. In the old country, the Eckes ran a vegetarian health spa. Especially back then, German vegetarian was an oxymoron, so the family left in search of a climate that was more conducive to growing fruits and vegetables year-round.

With 5-year-old Paul (Ecke's grandfather) in tow, the family was originally headed for the tropical environs of Fiji. But they decided to cut their journey short when they stumbled upon a budding agricultural oasis: Los Angeles.

The Eckes settled in Eagle Rock, where they started an orchard and a dairy, dabbling with flowers on the side. A shrub with brilliant red bracts that bloomed in November and December particularly grabbed their attention.

Winter bloomer

"When you think about it, there's not that many flowers that naturally bloom in the winter," Ecke III points out. The Eckes persuaded large-scale growers to adopt poinsettias into their rotations as an off-season cash cow. Setting up shop in a humble roadside stand on Sunset Boulevard, the family hawked their crop.

As for their ingenious marketing strategy, "they just started calling it 'the Christmas flower,' " explains Ecke III. With some clever branding and a lot of entrepreneurial know-how, this family of immigrant herbivores birthed a holiday tradition that endures to this day.

In 1923, they were muscled out of Hollywood by the movie business. Ecke Sr. moved the operation south to Encinitas (San Diego County), where he turned the poinsettia into the best-selling potted plant in America and his business into a bona fide monopoly. At the peak of their success, these poinsettia moguls commanded upward of 90 percent of the American poinsettia market.

Paul Ecke Jr., Ecke III's father, took the reins of the family business in the 1960s and began to explore more subliminal ways of associating the poinsettia with Christmas. A skillful promoter, he increased the plant's visibility by giving away poinsettias to TV shows.

When the networks put on their annual Christmas specials, Ecke Jr. made sure that his poinsettias got just as much screen time as hosts like Johnny Carson, Ronald Reagan and Dinah Shore.

Women's magazines turned out to be his most significant coup. Ecke Jr. called the editors of publications like Sunset and Women's Day, convincing them that Christmas trees and mistletoe alone weren't cutting it for their holiday photo spreads. They were intrigued, but told him that those shoots often took place in summer.

So Ecke Jr. began producing a select crop that bloomed out of season expressly for product placement. "Then women are looking at their Women's Day magazine, they see a beautiful decoration for the holidays, they see poinsettias - bingo," says Ecke III. "Now they feel bad if their house doesn't look as nice as the photo shoots in the magazines."

But it wasn't just media savvy that made Ecke poinsettias squeeze out the competition - their plants were superior products. In the 1960s, Ecke Sr. came across a technique that produced a sturdier variety of poinsettia, one that boasted an unusually high number of blooms per stem and was hardy enough to withstand intense jostling during shipping.

Secret technique

Other companies couldn't figure out how to replicate the technique that made the Ecke product so tough. That is, until a graduate student discovered the Eckes' closely guarded secret.

"I read about it in one of the industry journals," remembers Ecke III. "I was like, 'Uh-oh. That's not good.' But by then the cat was literally out of the bag, and we couldn't stuff it back in." Though they retain dominance over the American poinsettia market, their share has slipped from 90 percent to 70 percent since the outing.

Now, with stiff competition from European companies that slash costs by moving growing operations to Mexico and Central America, the Eckes have had to tweak their supply chain to stay on top. They grow all their cuttings in Guatemala now; their historic Encinitas property houses only Ecke Ranch headquarters and R&D enterprises.

Ecke III also laments the fact that poinsettia prices have been stagnating for a while. "The prices are too low, in my opinion," he says. "A lot of guys tell me that they're selling a poinsettia for the same price, inflation adjusted, that they were selling it for in 1970."

The Eckes don't sell any fully grown poinsettias to consumers directly. Their business focuses solely on developing and patenting new varieties, growing cuttings of those varieties and selling them to growers. Those growers then nurture the plants until they bloom, at which point they send them off to retailers.

The Eckes also send cuttings to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, where poinsettias are grown and then sent to various city agencies and parks. George Vaughan, chief nursery specialist at the Golden Gate Park Nursery, says he tends annually to about 1,400 poinsettias, which bloom here in November and December.

Comparing his business to semiconductor giant Intel, Ecke III says, "We know what an Intel chip is, but we don't buy it. We buy a Dell computer that has an Intel processor in it. That's very much how we are."

Because of the nature of this supply chain, the poinsettia market pivots around growers. In California, that's a problematic reality - younger generations of landowners aren't necessarily interested in growing poinsettias.

"The old growers were growing poinsettias and other flowers and plants since the turn of the century," explains Jay Touriel, owner of Darling Flower Shop in Berkeley and a longtime seller of poinsettias. "And I'm talking about the 1900s. Now, three generations later, the grandkids don't want to do all the farming work, so they sell Grandpa's property or develop it into homes."

Ecke sees similar trends happening: "If growers aren't getting enough money to pay their costs and make some profits, then they're not going to grow (poinsettias) anymore. And in fact, some growers have gotten out of the business."

To stay afloat in these tough times, Ecke Ranch is expanding its catalog with new crops and ever-stranger varieties. They've even introduced a Facebook page to tout their product.

Although the traditional red and green poinsettia still reigns supreme, Ecke Ranch continues to cultivate "offbeat novelty types that the younger generation could identify with," as Ecke III says. One of his favorites is 'Ice Punch,' a red and white "tie-dyed" variety.

"There's nothing that can touch a poinsettia in terms of getting a holiday feel. The beauty of them is unsurpassed," says John Nicolini, president of Delano Nursery Inc. in Daly City. His grandfather started the nursery in 1922, and Nicolini has been in the business long enough to see an influx of varieties come and go. "Still, over the years the basic reds and whites have been the most popular."

Despite all the modern challenges his business is up against, Ecke III remains confident that his product will continue to sell. "People talk about how it's old-fashioned and all that, but guess what? They still buy it."

Poinsettia facts

-- During the six- to eight-week period surrounding the winter holidays, poinsettias sell hotter than hotcakes. Between 70 million and 80 million poinsettia plants invade homes, companies, malls and streets. Who's buying? Eighty percent are over 40, and 80 percent are women. Paul Ecke Jr.'s plan to include the poinsettia in women's magazine spreads for the holidays evidently worked its magic.

-- An old wives' tale has it that poinsettias are poisonous, that if your cat decides to munch on one, you'll find yourself in the market for a kitty coffin. Not true, say poinsettia experts. A 50-pound child would have to eat upward of 500 leaves before starting to feel so much as a tummy ache, and the plant poses no danger to household pets. Paul Ecke III drives this point home by eating poinsettias on camera whenever he's interviewed for TV shows.

-- The Euphorbia pulcherrima (or poinsettia, as it's known to commoners) remains a seriously misunderstood plant. It's more of a shrub than a flower, though it does have blossoms. The flowering bits aren't what you might expect, though. Those attention-commanding, broad, flat red leaves are actually called bracts. You'll have to get up close to see the poinsettia's true flowers, a small cluster of yellowish orbs located in the plant's center.

-- Poinsettia companies are on a quest for the holy grail: the blue poinsettia. Poinsettias are available in more varieties than ever, but a technique to isolate the gene for the coveted blue color remains the stuff of dreams. It wouldn't revolutionize the market or boost profits substantially, says Ecke III, but "I'd like our company to get it before somebody else does."

-- The Eckes weren't the only ones to connect the poinsettia with Christmas. An old Mexican legend tells the story of a little girl so poor that she can't afford to buy anything to offer to her church's Nativity scene. Refusing to show up empty-handed, she plucks a tangle of weeds from the side of the road. To her surprise, they miraculously bloom into dazzling red and green poinsettias at the baby Jesus' feet.

-- South Carolina native Joel Roberts Poinsett has several claims to fame. Sure, he served as a special agent to South America and later helped establish a little institution known as the Smithsonian. But in his free time, he was a bit of a horticultural geek. We know Poinsett best for the Mexican plant he brought to the United States in 1826 while he served as an ambassador. There they call it the nochebuena, but here we recognize it simply as the poinsettia.

David Wagner is a San Francisco writer. E-mail Sara Hayden at shayden@sfchronicle.com.