Most investigative reporters would never have thought to investigate a flower. But a thorough investigation of the flower industry is exactly what you get in Amy Stewart's new book, Flower Confidential (Algonquin Books, 2007). The subtitle of the book is "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers," and Stewart isn't kidding.
The Good: Leslie Woodruff, an eccentric and very prolific lily breeder who is widely credited with developing "Star Gazer," the world's most popular lily. The Bad: the big flower grower who offered Woodruff "a deal," but Woodruff ended up losing his land, his livelihood, and his lilies.
There are many more "Goods and Bads" running throughout the book. Stewart takes you way behind the scenes: to Ecuador, where laborers on flower farms work incredibly long hours for $150 a month, where child labor is a serious problem, and where workers are exposed to chemicals that are illegal in the United States. In Miami, she tours the airport's flower inspection facility, where Homeland Security officers open boxes of blooms, looking for contraband and for insects. While the inspectors are warned about pesticide residue, most consumers would never know that the flowers they buy harbor dangerous substances.
Stewart takes you on a tour of Sun Valley Floral Farms, the largest cut flower producer in the United States. Stewart says she expected acres of flowers growing in the ground. Instead, she encountered acres of greenhouses and flowers growing in a factory-like setting. "This is a big, big business," she says. "I could pretend that the flowers I buy ... are connected to nature and gardens and plant life, but here there is no denying that each blossom is a unit of profit."
The next time you head off to the grocery store for a bouquet of flowers, think about the following facts that Stewart presents in her book:
The worldwide cut flower market is a 40 billion dollar business. At the famous Dutch flower auction in Aalsmeer, 19 million plants and flowers are sold every morning to bidders from around the world. In the United States, about 75 percent of the cut flowers sold are imports, most from Latin America.
Many new roses today are bred for endurance instead of scent, so that they can withstand the long trip from the farms where they're grown to the grocery or florist in your neighborhood. Nevertheless, there's no denying the utter beauty of a perfect rose, and on Valentine's Day, Stewart admits that even she herself is swept up in the romance of opening a box from her husband containing two dozen orange and red bi-color 'Lipstick' roses.
In the back of the book, there's a list of several wholesale flower markets open to the public and growers that offer tours of their facilities. Stewart also offers a page or two of tips and techniques that make cut flowers last longer in the vase.
Anyone who has an interest in flowers will find this book essential reading. You'll be thrilled, you'll be outraged, you'll be happy and sad, but you'll definitely want this book in your collection.
The one thing I wish is that the book had an index, and I presume the publisher just didn't want to pay for one. Flower Confidential should be a classic reference work for years to come, but without an index, it's nearly useless for that purpose. Maybe the publisher would reconsider when the book goes into another printing.
(click on image to purchase book)
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