### Alstroemeria bouquets: the stem that remembers how it travelled Lay a bunch of alstroemeria flat for a few hours and the tips curve upward towards the light. Stand it up afterwards and the curve stays. Nothing straightens it, and the bend sits exactly where the eye goes first, at the top of the bunch. That single fact governs how the flower is packed, carried and set down. Couriers carry it upright in a tall box for that reason. At home the rule keeps applying: a bunch left on the kitchen counter while somebody hunts for a vase begins to bend within the hour. #### The vase decides what you paid for Each stem carries an umbel of several blooms instead of one head, and that is where the volume comes from. Squeeze those umbels into a narrow neck and the outer blooms crease against each other. The bunch loses the airiness that made it worth buying in the first place, and it does so quietly, over a day, so nobody connects the flat shape to the vase. Wide mouth, shallow water, stems allowed to lean apart. > "People ask why the bunch looked bigger in the shop. Nine times out of ten it is the vase, and the flowers are fine." > JFLOO florist Scent is the other thing worth knowing before ordering. There is almost none. That sounds like a small point until the bouquet has to sit on a dining table or beside a hospital bed, where a strong perfume turns a gift into a problem for everyone in the room. Half-closed buds open over several days and change how the bunch is judged. Day one looks modest. By the third or fourth day it is at its fullest, so a bouquet meant to impress at the moment of handover needs stems that are further along, chosen before the bouquet is tied. #### Dubai adds heat to the same problem Summer here runs up to 40 °C and the coast adds humidity on top. A hollow stem loses water faster than a woody one, so we pack insulated and keep the box out of direct sun at both ends of the journey, in the van and on the doorstep. Delivery takes 2 to 4 hours across Downtown, Business Bay, Marina, JBR, Palm Jumeirah and DIFC, and we work 9 AM to 10 PM. The address needs a floor and an office or villa number. In the towers a courier without one waits downstairs while the box warms up. Alstroemeria bouquets in Dubai go out most often to offices and family dinners rather than to romantic handovers. The absence of perfume is part of that. So is the count: five stems read across a room like ten single-headed flowers, which is useful arithmetic when a whole floor of colleagues is being thanked at once. Business handovers suit the flower for a duller reason. A box that reaches a DIFC reception on Monday morning is still opening umbels at the end of the week, and nobody has to carry it out of a meeting room because of the smell. Up close the trade is visible. Individual blooms are small, veined and speckled on the inner petals, so at arm's length the bunch reads as fine detail, and beside Dutch roses at 60 to 90 cm it plays the supporting part. Orders start at 250 AED, and payment goes through Apple Pay or cash to the courier. Spent blooms do not fall on their own. They dry and hang in the umbel beside the live ones, so pinch them out at the base. Strip the yellowing lower leaves as they show, because the foliage tires long before the flowers do. Change the water every couple of days and recut, since a soft hollow stem sours faster than a woody one. Two weeks in the vase is then an ordinary result rather than a lucky one.