July 2010 Newsletter

Red, White and Blue Flowers

All About Blue Flowers

Blue – the col­or of the sky, our oceans, and glac­i­er ice. While we see blue every day all around us, when it comes to blue flow­ers, there just aren’t many to be found. There is a demand for blue flow­ers; how­ev­er, so that is why you might see some whole­sale flower ven­dors dye their best creamy ros­es to an unre­al blue. We don’t care for this look and have some rec­om­men­da­tions on blue flow­ers that you can inte­grate into your arrange­ments that are nat­u­ral­ly blue and beautiful.

Being close to our country’s birth­day, this is the time of year that the nurs­eries are full of red, white and blue flow­er­ing plants and florists also cre­ate some fun arrange­ments in the good ol’ red, white and blue! At left, we cre­at­ed this design using white hydrangea, blue del­phini­um, and red spray roses.

Delphinium

We cre­at­ed this Burgee — pic­tured — (a Burgee is a dis­tin­guish­ing flag, regard­less of its shape, of a recre­ation­al boat­ing orga­ni­za­tion) to hon­or our broth­er who had tak­en over as Com­modore (the chief offi­cer) of his yacht club. It was made in flo­ral foam atop a large cut­ting board. We cut it to the pen­nant shape, and painstak­ing­ly placed each del­phini­um flower to make the blue, and then added full head­ed red car­na­tions, and white spray car­na­tions for the anchor. To fin­ish it off we ran navy blue rib­bon around the edge and sim­ply pinned it into the foam.

Hydrangea

White Chi­na Mums with Blue Hydrangea

Both hydrangea and del­phini­um both come in an elec­tric cobalt blue and a soft baby blue. Both flow­ers are known for their lit­tle flo­rets. Hydrangea heads often mim­ic a big ball of flow­ers and del­phini­um flow­ers climb up the stem like a lad­der. Flower Duet com­bined this duet of blue at The Hunt­ing­ton recent­ly to hon­or the paint­ing of Blue Boy. We cre­at­ed and taught dra­mat­ic arrange­ments that were suit­able décor for a for­mal man­tel or din­ing table.

Cornflower

Anoth­er blue flower is Corn­flower – I know you can pic­ture the Cray­on, it is also known as a bachelor’s but­ton. It is actu­al­ly a wild­flower. We used this flower for a wed­ding o the 4th of July last summer!

Bees like blue flow­ers, too, in fact. Bees will go for bright­ly col­ored flow­ers with petals that are usu­al­ly blue or yel­low or a mix­ture of these (appar­ent­ly bees can­not see red). So plant blue in your gar­den and mix it with white and red for a win­ning com­bi­na­tion. A good option would be to get petu­nias in red, white and pur­ple. The pur­ple looks pret­ty close to blue.

Tropical Flowers

Bird of Paradise

Exotics…that is what most peo­ple say when they are refer­ring to Trop­i­cal Flow­ers. Exot­ic indeed — when one thinks about the locale these sorts of flow­ers call home. While Hawaii is home to many of the trop­i­cal flow­ers we are able to pur­chase here from our main­land ven­dors, that was not always the case. Many of these exot­ic flow­ers are orig­i­nal­ly from Sin­ga­pore, Thai­land, Sri Lan­ka and South Amer­i­ca. For exam­ple, the Bird-of-Par­adise shown above is orig­i­nal­ly from South Africa.

Besides their wild col­ors and bold shapes, trop­i­cal flow­ers have a longer vase life than most cut flow­ers. The flow­ers can last up to 14 days and the trop­i­cal leaves up to 30 days. Both do best under warmer con­di­tions and should not be refrig­er­at­ed below 55 degrees F. They all do well with a warm mist­ing occa­sion­al­ly to mim­ic their native humid climates.

Heliconias

Heli­co­nias are strik­ing and some­times con­fused with birds of par­adise. Native to the trop­i­cal Amer­i­c­as and the Pacif­ic Ocean islands west to Indone­sia, they can be found upright or hang­ing — pic­tured below.

Ginger

Gin­gers are one of the most beau­ti­ful and col­or­ful flow­ers in the world of flow­ers. Gin­ger is a rhi­zome of the herb which is found in India. The word gin­ger con­jures up images of the thin­ly sliced good­ness on your sushi plate or ground in your gin­ger­snap cookies.

Dendrobium Orchids

Orchids are found just about every­where, besides deserts and glac­i­ers. The great major­i­ty are to be found in the trop­ics, most­ly Asia, South Amer­i­ca and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, but they are also found above the Arc­tic Cir­cle, in south­ern Patag­o­nia and even on Mac­quar­ie Island, close to Antarc­ti­ca. Eas­i­ly avail­able are the Den­dro­bi­um orchids which are sold in bunch­es of 10. They come in White, Pur­ple, Green, light pink and a var­ie­gat­ed pur­ple and white. Just ten in a vase will give an instant exot­ic feel to a room.

Dur­ing part of Casey’s cruise ship career, one of her jobs was to main­tain the flower arrange­ments on the ship – and then lat­er to cre­ate flower designs for all the ship’s pub­lic rooms. Some­times, a local florist would come on board and take care of cre­at­ing the flower arrange­ments. In Sin­ga­pore, the florist was a woman named Dol­ly. Casey says it was amaz­ing when she would board the ship in Sin­ga­pore with hun­dreds of orchid stems and she would build these amaz­ing mass­es of orchids through­out the ship. They would eas­i­ly last the length of the voy­age, which made her job eas­i­er while main­tain­ing them.

Anthirium

Anthuri­um is a trop­i­cal flower is one that looks and feels like plas­tic – but of course it’s not! They do cer­tain­ly last a very long time in a cut vase which is why you see them a lot in restau­rants when you are on vaca­tion in Hawaii. Com­ing in green, white, pink and red they are a great flower to include in any trop­i­cal bou­quet. There are close to 1000 species and can be grown as house­plants, or out­doors in mild cli­mates in shady spots. They are also a fun valen­tine flower as they are heart shaped.

If you want to learn more about trop­i­cal flow­ers, come to our class this month at The Hunt­ing­ton Library, we’ll we cre­ate a high-style design with orchids and oth­er trop­i­cal flowers!

Cancer Florascope — 21 June — 22 July – Lotus

About Florascopes

For years, astrologers have linked per­son­al­i­ty traits with the night sky. A fun book called Flo­ras­cope: The Secret Astrol­o­gy of Flow­ers offers a dif­fer­ent take on your every­day horo­scope. This is meant to enter­tain and if you are so intrigued,
buy the book! It makes a great gift.

Lotus Flower (Cancer) Traits

If you are a Lotus Flower (or Can­cer) you are com­pas­sion­ate, deeply lov­ing and car­ing of human­i­ty which is why it was Bud­dha’s favorite flower. Lotus is will­ing to strive for a well-paid job and sol­id home. The Lotus Child take time adjust­ing to kinder­garten, but are high­ly imag­i­na­tive and love to tell a story.
Lotus Flow­ers get along well with sun­flow­ers, tulips, pop­pies, mag­no­lias, pas­sion flow­ers and oth­er lotus blossoms.
Lotus Flow­ers include Louis Arm­strong, Bill Cos­by, Tom Cruise, Princess Dian­na, Tom Han­ks, Helen Keller, Meryl Streep and Robin Williams.

About Lotus Flowers — Botanical Information

The Lotus is an aquat­ic peren­ni­al — which means — it grows in fresh water and blooms around the same time every year — in the sum­mer. It should not be con­fused with a Water Lily as it is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent plant with a dif­fer­ent struc­ture all togeth­er. Lotus flow­ers come in pink and white only, while Water Lilies come in all dif­fer­ent col­ors. The Lotus is native to India and is the nation­al flower to India and Viet­nam. The roots of the plant hold onto the bot­tom of the riv­er, pond or lake where it lives. The stem of the flower can be up to 5 feet and the flow­ers can be as wide as 7 inches.

It’s edible!

The flow­ers, seeds, young leaves, and roots are all edi­ble. In Asia, the petals are used some­times for gar­nish, while the large leaves are used as a wrap for food, not fre­quent­ly eaten.

The roots are used as a veg­etable in soups, deep-fried, stir-fried, and in tra­di­tion­al Asian herbal med­i­cine and are often pick­led with rice vine­gar, sug­ar, chili and/or garlic.

The petals, leaves, and roots can also all be eat­en raw, but there is a risk of par­a­sites, so they should be cooked before eating.

Mystical Ties

In Greek mythol­o­gy, the lotus-eaters lived on an island near North Africa that had a lot of lotus plants. The lotus fruits and flow­ers were nar­cot­ic and addic­tive, caus­ing the peo­ple to sleep in peace­ful apathy.

From ancient times the lotus has been a divine sym­bol in Asian tra­di­tions rep­re­sent­ing the virtues of sex­u­al puri­ty and non-attachment.

Hin­dus revere the lotus flower with the divini­ties Vish­nu and Lak­sh­mi often por­trayed on a pink lotus in iconography.

In Bud­dhist sym­bol­ism, the lotus rep­re­sents puri­ty of the body, speech, and mind.

In Floral design

At the flo­ral mart, dur­ing the sum­mer sea­son you can find the green seed heads that resem­ble the spouts of water­ing cans.

These Lotus pod heads are dried and can be pur­chased all year round at flo­ral sup­ply stores and online. You can glue them to picks and then place them in fall arrange­ments for an inter­est­ing texture

The tall stems of the Lotus blos­som are hard­er to come by, but you might be able to find a ven­dor who will spe­cial order them for you. 

Flower Arranging Book Review

The Mean­ing of Flowers

by Gretchen Scoble & Ann Field

Filled with pret­ty illus­tra­tions, this would be a great gift for any lover of flow­ers and as a ref­er­ence for you so that you know what the spe­cial mean­ings are for flow­ers that you arrange with everyday.

You can learn all about the his­to­ry of the Flo­ri­og­ra­phy — the Vic­to­ri­an Age’s study of the mean­ing of flow­ers and look up what each flower means. Here is a excerpt on Daisies: “Daisies sug­gest inno­cence. The name comes from the Old Eng­lish “day’s eye,” so called because of the pupil-like yel­low cen­ter of this round white flower, and from the habit of daisies to shut their petals when the sun is gone.”

Floral Tool — Flower Food

We are always telling our stu­dents to use com­mer­cial­ly pre­pared flower food. We pro­vide a free pack­et for each stu­dent at our work­shops because it’s a prod­uct we believe in.

Why Use It?
Some flow­ers have to trav­el far dis­tances before they arrive to us to arrange them art­ful­ly. It is our job to ensure they last a long time for our stu­dents, clients, brides and for us.

Flow­ers are cut from their plant and pack­aged up, then often shipped out of water in a chilly con­tain­er. When they arrive to the whole­saler or local flower shop they need some reviv­ing. This process is called con­di­tion­ing. The right mix of flower food and water will assist in feed­ing the flow­ers to what they were sim­i­lar­ly receiv­ing from their plant.

When the cut flow­ers have the chance to drink up this mix­ture of flower food and water, the stems “hard­en” and firm up in order to hold up those heavy heads…especially in roses.

Every few days, you should change the water in your arrange­ments, but be sure to include the flower food and water mix­ture so that the flow­ers last longer.

What Exact­ly Is It?
From Flo­ral­ife® :
“Flo­ral­ife® Flower Food con­tains three main ingre­di­ents: a sug­ar (for nutri­tion), an acid­i­fi­er (to low­er the pH of the water) and a class of com­pounds called stem unpluggers.”

Home­made Flower Food Alternatives?
So what about adding aspirin, pen­nies, bleach, sug­ar, club soda, and 7‑Up to the water? We have all heard some of these ideas to length­en the vase life of flow­ers. Flower Duet will be doing a case study with the result in our August Newslet­ter. We will take one bunch of flow­ers and give them all a dif­fer­ent cock­tail and see which com­bi­na­tion does the best. Tune in again in August. In the mean­time, pull that flo­ral food out of the kitchen draw­er and use it.