### Protea bouquets in Phuket: three weeks in water, then something else Air on the island usually sits between 25 and 33 °C with plenty of moisture in it, and the monsoon runs from May to October. Most cut flowers spend that climate. A protea barely notices it, because the head is built from stiff bracts rather than petals and there is very little in it that can wilt. Fresh protea stands two to three weeks in water. Nothing else on the same shelf comes close, and that number is the reason people order it for a long stay rather than for an evening. The care is short. Recut the woody stem at an angle with a sharp knife, since secateurs crush a stem like this instead of cutting it. Keep the vase properly full rather than shallow. Change the water every few days and wash the vessel out while it is empty. In this climate the middle instruction is the one that slips. Warm humid air turns water in a vase faster than a cool room does, so every few days here means the shorter end of that, and a vase left alone for a week will smell before the flower shows anything at all. > "Somebody rang about black leaves and a perfect head and asked which one was lying. Neither. That is just what this flower looks like in week two." > JFLOO florist Leaf blackening is normal and is not evidence of an old stem. The foliage darkens from a shortage of light and stored sugars while the head carries on exactly as it was. Pull the blackened leaves off. The bare stem under a heavy head looks cleaner than it did with them on. Catalogue orders start at 2200 THB, payment goes by bank card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PromptPay, bank transfer or cash in THB, and deliveries run 9 AM to 10 PM. #### Then the unusual part Stop changing the water, leave the stems where they are, and the flower dries in place without collapsing. Stiff bracts cannot fold inward the way petals do, so the shape survives whole and the colour settles into something quieter. Three things decide how long that dried head lasts: - Sunlight, which pulls the remaining colour out of it. - Damp, which marks the foliage permanently, and on this island that is the real risk. - Dusting method, since a soft brush works and a wet cloth leaves streaks nothing removes. Hanging it upside down, the way lavender gets dried, achieves nothing here. The stem is woody and will not bend, and a heavy head left hanging only stretches the neck underneath it. Standing in an empty vessel is the whole method. A dried protea kept indoors and out of the sun holds for years. On the coast here that means keeping it in a room rather than on a terrace, where a night of humidity does more damage than a month on a shelf. #### Why couriers like it This is one of the few flowers that reaches a door in the same condition it left the workroom. The bract does not crease from a touch and it takes a temperature change without complaint, which matters on an island where the west coast window runs 90 to 180 minutes and villas, marinas and airport routes each get their own. It also survives waiting. A box left at a gate for an hour while somebody is found is a disaster for most cut flowers and a non event for this one. Monsoon months are the same story. Showers and slow hill roads in the evening mean route time gets added to the booking, and the extra half hour that would worry us with a delicate order changes nothing about what comes out of this box. Order protea bouquets in Phuket when the flowers need to outlast the trip. Tell us the arrival and departure dates, and the arrangement gets built to be worth photographing on the last morning as well as the first.