Plants in Dubai: an orchid, a cactus or a florarium for desert air
Plant choices in Dubai split along the same line as the local weather: dry outdoor air for succulents, air-conditioned rooms for orchids. The city gets about 95 millimetres of rain a year over roughly 25 rainy days — the kind of hot, rarely watered place succulents come from, storing up to nine tenths of their own weight as water. Most of what fills the plants in Dubai section, though, is moth orchids, epiphytes from forests between India and New Guinea that cling to tree branches in the wild rather than grow in soil.
Delivery across the city is covered in full on the delivery across Dubai page.
Moth orchids in Dubai: January's 24 °C and a new flower spike
Many of the orchids here come in a jute cachepot paired with roses. Whichever format is chosen, though, the plant inside is the same moth orchid, and what it needs doesn't change with the packaging.
A new flower spike only forms when daytime temperatures stay below 27 °C, so the calendar decides more than the thermometer suggests it should. January in Dubai runs around 24 °C by day, cool enough for a spike to start, while from June to September the daytime temperature climbs past forty and spike formation more or less stops. A plant that comes into bloom in winter typically stays flowering for two to three months, so an orchid given in January can still be in flower come spring.
Once summer sets in, an orchid lives indoors and nowhere else. It does well at 19–30 °C by day, a range any air-conditioned room already covers. Direct summer sun through glass burns the leaves, so the plant belongs on the shaded side of a window rather than in full light, and the air conditioning itself also dries the air around it.
The clear inner pot is meant to stay inside its jute cachepot rather than come out of it. Watering about once a week is usually enough. Pour it through, let any excess drain out of the saucer instead of sitting in it, and keep both the leaves and the central crown dry.
Florariums and cacti for a city with 25 rainy days a year
A florarium here is a succulent in an open glass shape. A cube, a droplet or an icosahedron holds a single plant such as a stone rose, a sedum or a haworthia, with the glass doing the job a pot would otherwise do. The Droplet Florarium with Succulent is one of the shapes on offer.
Succulents generally do better in an open container than a closed one, and a mist from a spray bottle suits them more than a jug of water poured straight into the soil. The name "stone rose" covers a rosette-forming succulent sold under that label rather than one particular species; its Latin root, semper vivus, means "ever living".
A florarium or a cactus suits anyone who waters on their own schedule rather than a strict one, and sits as well on a desk as on a windowsill. Anyone choosing by pot style rather than by plant name can start instead from plants sorted by type.
An orchid with roses or chocolate for a family visit
Flowers are appropriate for Eid visits, a new baby or a business thank-you. The dates for those and other occasions are worth checking before the delivery slots fill up. Local custom has a gift handed over with the right hand or with both, and it's often set aside rather than opened in front of the giver. Whoever receives it is therefore likely to look at the plant properly only once the visit is over.
For a visit where flowers alone feel plain, there's an orchid paired with roses, such as the Orchid and Roses in Jute Pot. Others are set beside a box of chocolate instead. Cocoa butter melts at 34 to 38 °C, and daytime temperatures from June to September regularly pass forty. That means a pairing like that isn't something to leave in a parked car or on a sunny windowsill on the way to the visit.
The florist photographs every order before the courier sets off, and most orders are handed over on the day they're placed, with delivery free across the city centre. For a first look at what's on offer, the orchids in their various formats sit under flowering plants, the glass shapes are gathered under florariums, and the desert varieties are under cactus plants.
