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The worldwide floriculture industry demands a diverse range of cut flower and foliage products, with the unusual and the exotic always attracting the attention of this fashion-driven industry. On the world market, Australia’s export potential lies in its unique native flora, a rich resource of valuable new flower products waiting to be fully developed and marketed to the world. Domestic consumers are also increasingly seeking out native flowers.Many native flowers and foliages now being grown commercially were initially mostly bush-picked to first establish market acceptance. Today in NSW most are grown in beds or rows in commercial plantations along the coastal strip where there are suitable growing conditions and good transport links to major domestic and export markets. [ read more ]

source: www.ricecrc.org

A beautiful 18 ½ foot tall Douglas-fir tree from Pennsylvania will be the Official White House Christmas Tree this season.

The Blue Room Christmas Tree will be officially presented to First Lady Laura Bush by Francis, Margaret and Chris Botek of Crystal Spring Tree Farm in Lehighton, Pa. The Boteks earned this honor by winning the National Christmas Tree Association’s (NCTA) national Christmas Tree contest held in August 2006 in Portland, Ore., and becoming Grand Champions.

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Christmas SPIRIT Foundation Delivers Holiday Cheer to Troops and Military Families .

Christmas Tree growers will donate more than 11,000 Christmas Trees to U.S. troops and their families this holiday season. The Trees for Troops Program, sponsored by the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation, kicked off on Nov. 14, 2006, with the collection of trees in Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Ind. These trees will be shipped overseas to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and sailors in the 5th fleet in the Gulf.

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THE price of Christmas trees may rise this year due to a shortage of firs in Denmark, Europe’s leading exporter of the trees.

“We see a 10-15 per cent price increase,” said Kaj Oestergaard, manager
of the Danish Christmas tree growers’ association.

The popular nordmann fir will cost approximately 130-140 kroner (?11.70-?12.60) per metre, he said.

Denmark exported about 85 per cent of the nine million Christmas trees felled last year in the Scandinavian country.

Britain, Germany and France top the list of countries importing Danish trees.

However, Denmark’s production has been declining since 2004, when many growers went out of business because of falling prices, Mr Oestergaard said

Source: www.scotsman.com

Some brightly-coloured flowers appear to use a green glow to attract bees and bats to pollinate them, according to a study published yesterday.

To discover this signalling system, never before seen in plants, Prof Francisco García-Carmona and colleagues at the University of Murcia in Spain extracted and purified the pigments of Mirabilis jalapa flowers.

The flowers, found in South America, are also known as four-o’clocks, marvel of Peru and beauty of the night.

The team found that the flowers, which open in the afternoon, rely on fluorescence, so emitting green light rather than just reflecting it, a signalling system recorded before only in budgerigars and the mantis shrimp.

They report in the journal Nature finding that the fluorescence emitted by one pigment, a yellow betaxanthin, is absorbed by another pigment, a violet betacyanin, to create a green fluorescent pattern on the petals.

“Visible fluorescent patterns in flowers opens up the study of the relationships between plants and pollinators. To date fluorescence has not been considered a signal,” said Prof García-Carmona.

Source: www.telegraph.com.uk

Every time you order flowers, you could get ripped off instead. “Hank Investigates” a nationwide flower fakeout that’s set up to trick you into paying more and getting less. Will you be the next victim of the “Phony florists?”
Three feet tall and brimming with a dozen orchids, this is the impressive bouquet Randall wanted to send.

So how did he wind up with this? Just two orchids and half the size.

Hank Phillippi Ryan, 7News
“Did you get what you paid for?”

Randall
“No, I don’t think I did.”

Randall had searched the phone listings for a local florist and found a “florist in Quincy” at 816 Willard St. He called their “617″ Quincy phone number.

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The Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai launched a campaign yesterday to plant a billion trees next year (2007)- 32 every second – to highlight the need to tackle global warming. A global problem for all of us. Professor Maathai, who won the prize in 2004 for her work on reforestation in Kenya, pledged to plant 2m trees through her Green Belt Movement. She was speaking at the annual UN climate change convention meeting, which is taking place in Nairobi and was described by one delegate as “climate foreplay” because few binding decisions are expected.

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A local chrysanthemum flower breeding company has unveiled the latest flower cuttings variety -Arctic Queen. John Rutten Fiduga his managing director said the cuttings produce large white flowers with a green centre. The flower is being bred exclusively for the Russian market. The cuttings, which are bred here, will be grown in Holland from where they will be exported to Russia. Rutten said Russia is expected to import over 500,000 stems of the Arctic Queen every week.

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US floral designer and wholesaler’s representative Diana Westcott won a trip to Holland as part of a contest promoting the Flower Council’s USA newsletter. Although ‘Lady Luck’ certainly played its part, Diana – whose floral career began as an apprentice in a small flower shop in Maine in 1974 – was a deserved winner: “Dutch flowers have always been very near and dear to my heart.” Superior During her whirlwind tour of the Dutch flower industry, Diana visited Dutch grower ‘Ko Kolk Hortensia BV’: “Hydrangeas are my favorite flowers, so entering their greenhouse and seeing this huge ocean of hydrangeas was absolutely thrilling! The flowers were four feet tall, with huge heads the size of basketballs, and of far superior quality to the hydrangeas grown in South America and California.

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A toxin that can make bacterial infections turn deadly is also found in higher plants, researchers at UC Davis, the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass. and the University of Nebraska have found. Lipid A, the core of endotoxin, is located in the chloroplasts, structures that carry out photosynthesis within plant cells.

The lipid A in plant cells is evidently not toxic. The human intestine contains billions of Gram-negative bacteria, but lipid A does not become a problem unless bacteria invade the bloodstream.

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Over the last three years, the Flower Movers Network directory’s customer base has grown over 300 percent each year. In addition, orders for flowers and gifts placed through the vendors in the site’s directory have increased each of the three years by more than 500 percent. The company itself is also expanding, with 100 percent yearly growth of its staff. In addition, last year Flower Movers Network moved its headquarters to a new facility in Denver that is double the size of its original location.
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Tempting: The flower gardens in Da Lat City attract locals and tourists alike.

As more farmers turn from traditional crops to flowers, they are finding a global market for their products and more money in the bank. Khanh Chi reports.

Like many farmers, an annual income of VND100 million (US$6,305) was previously unthinkable for Bui Van Loi of Da Lat City in the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) province of Lam Dong. But the burgeoning flower industry has turned around the lives of many farmers who have replaced low yield rice crops with flowers.

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