Flowers are an amazing way of communicating your affection and love. Some flowers can convert a particular message. These beautiful blooms can represent deep emotions from true love to intense friendship. For instance, chrysanthemums represent friendship, gardenias show secret love, lilies represent innocence, purity, and chastity.
Also, one gives tulips to the perfect lover and stephanotis to show happiness in marriage. Usually, orchids are given as corsages for showing beauty and love and a red tulip to declare feelings of love. Not to mention, no other bloom shows more meaning than a rose. All roses represent love but some colors have particular meanings.
Here are some of the popularly accepted meanings for various rose colors, arrangements, and blooms:
- Red roses represent love, courage, or respect.
- Yellow roses show gladness, freedom, or joy.
- Peach or pink roses exude admiration, sympathy, appreciation, or gratitude.
- White roses signify secrecy or purity
- White and red roses together demonstrate unity.
- Two roses combined together indicate engagement.
In addition, when you give rosebuds to someone, it is a way to say that they are beautiful and young. One rose stands as a symbol of simplicity. When you give a fully bloomed rose, it is a symbol of love. If you give a bunch of blooms, it signifies gratitude.
So, these are some of the secrets that you should know about your flowers. However, do you know where your blooms come from? Florists know how to arrange a range of flowers and care for them. But in reality, they do more than just putting flowers into a beautiful vase. Find below the real secret behind your flowers!
The Real Secret Behind Flowers
In 1967, Colorado State University carried out research and found that the capital of Colombia was an ideal place for growing flowers to be sold in the United States. The capital has a pleasant climate with consistent light for about 12 hours a day and a little temperature variation. This research, later on, turned out to an economic revolution in Columbia, which later sprang into a global industry.
The researcher called David Cheever, along with his partners opened up a business called Floramérica in Columbia. This company used to apply modern shipping techniques and assembly-line mechanisms at greenhouses. It turned into a big business in no time.
Now, this country is the second-largest exporter of cut flowers in the world after the Netherlands. Columbia ships over $1 billion in flowers, while commanding around 70 percent of the United States market. So, if you purchase a bunch in a big-box store, airport kiosk, or supermarket, it probably arrived from the Bogotá savanna. In just 40 years after the research, Colombian flowers have turned out to be another industrial item, such as electronics and food.
So, the next question that comes into our minds is that how could something so perishable and delicate have come so far? There is no question that inexpensive imported items that Americans purchase often take a toll on the persons who make them.
Many flowers cultivated in Colombia are bred in various European labs, specifically Dutch labs, which ship cuttings and seedlings to planters. For instance, a gerbera plant could last many years and produce hundreds of blooms, where each plant takes around 8-12 weeks for maturing. Planters keep on rotating new plants and changing colors constantly based on the consumer’s mood or the season.
Not many years ago, Americans used to get their flowers from neighborhood florists, who purchased flowers grown on United States farms. Then, florists crafted floral arrangements and bouquets for delivery. Of course, they still follow the procedure but this approach appears to be quaint now. Today, the bunches that most Americans purchase at supermarkets are cultivated, accumulated, and packaged overseas.
To keep the flowers fresh for longer, they are stored at 34 degrees Fahrenheit. It would not be wrong to say that the whole floral industry just depends on this number. When you cut a flower, its ability for photosynthesizing food from carbon dioxide, water, and light soon ceases. Also, their stored food begins to deplete and the bloom wilts. So, by putting blooms in water, this process slows down. However, cold temperatures could arrest the process for weeks at a time. That’s why there is a need for cold chains, where refrigerated warehouses and trucks are required at every point for ensuring that flowers stay in suspended animation from farmhouses to stores.
In cold storerooms, boxes having flowers are linked to refrigeration units for infusing them with very chilled air. After that, they are stacked on a pallet wrapped in plastic. Only then, the flowers are loaded onto planes and trucks. So, it takes around 48 hours for blooms to arrive at a warehouse in the United States from a farm in Columbia. Plus, a day or two to get to a floral retailer.
The global marketplace will demand cheaper flowers always. Now, Colombia growers compete with other growers in nations like Kenya and neighboring Ecuador.
So, this is how the global marketplace for flowers emerged in Colombia. Now, you know how much effort it takes to deliver your favorite flowers at your doorstep. You should try to keep flowers fresh as much as you can. For this, you need to add water having floral food to the flower vase every day. You can get this flower food from any floral retailer.
After the blooms are past their prime, you have to discard them or create a lasting memory by producing a potpourri out of the flower petals. Not just that, but you can even press and dry the blooms for the memory book. So, there are endless ways to use your flowers.
Now, you know about the secrets behind your flowers. Every flower speaks a language that the recipient needs to understand. If they do not understand this secret language, then they would not be able to get to the secrets behind your flowers. To brighten up your partner’s day, deliver a bunch of flowers now!
