Carnations

The flower everyone underestimates

Carnations have a bad name, and it came from supermarket buckets rather than from the flower. Grown and graded properly, the carnation is the longest-lasting cut flower we sell. Two weeks in a clean vase is ordinary. Three is not unusual.

The difference is grade. A carnation bred for volume has a thin calyx, a light stem and a bloom that opens flat and tired within days. The stems we buy are heavy enough to feel, the calyx holds the petals in a tight cup, and the ruffled edge stays crisp as the flower opens out. Same species, a different object.

Four things that decide how long they last

1. Cut half an inch off each stem on a slant, between the joints. A carnation stem is jointed like bamboo, and a cut made through a node seals over and stops drinking.
2. Strip every leaf that would sit below the waterline. Carnation foliage breaks down quickly and clouds the water.
3. Change the water every second day and rinse the vase while you do. The film you can feel on the glass is bacteria, and bacteria, not age, is what ends most bouquets.
4. Keep the vase away from the fruit bowl. Ripening fruit gives off ethylene, and carnations react to it faster than almost anything else we handle.

There is no season to wait for

Carnations reach Los Angeles through importers in every month, which is why we print no season for them the way we do for ranunculus. Nothing about them is Californian and the supply barely moves, so price and quality stay level across the calendar. That steadiness is the whole argument for the flower. We go through which flowers here are local and which are flown in over at what is in season in Los Angeles.

What they are good at, and what they are not

Send them where nobody will be topping up a vase: a hospital room, a desk at an office across town, a friend who has just moved and owns one jug. They carry a get well message better than anything else at their price, and several of them sit inside bouquets under $110. They are a weak choice when you need a photograph the same evening, because the ruffle reads as texture rather than shape and it wants a day to open. For that, a single-variety bouquet of roses does more work, and we explain why in the mono-bouquet, and why it is harder.