Orchid bouquets: built differently from everything else on the counter
Most cut flowers are gathered in the hand, turned, tied and trimmed flat across the bottom. An orchid spray refuses that method, because the stem is thin, arching and carries its blooms along one side, so a florist who spirals it into a round bunch ends up with half the flowers facing the wall.
The good builds accept the shape instead of fighting it.
Where the flowers should be pointing
Look at the bouquet from the position the recipient will hold it, chest height, slightly tilted back. Every open bloom should be visible from that angle, with the sprays fanned rather than stacked. When the arrangement is right, the arch of each stem carries the eye outward and the flowers sit in tiers instead of a flat wall.
Now look at the back. It should be plain and deliberate: foliage, wrapping, a clean binding point. What you do not want is three sprays turned inward because they would not fit any other way.
Density is the other tell. Orchid blooms are large, complex and slightly waxy, and crowding them removes the one thing they are bought for, which is the space around each flower.
The vials
Because the stem drinks poorly, each spray in a mixed arrangement is often set into its own small plastic vial of solution, capped and pushed up against the base of the stem. This is not packaging and it is not a repair. It is the feeding system, and in a tight hand-tied bouquet it may be the only water that particular flower can reach.
Two things follow from that. A vial should sit tight against the stem with no gap and no leaking cap, and it should be hidden by foliage or wrap rather than dangling in view, because a visible vial with a loose cap means the bouquet was finished in a hurry.
Tell whoever receives it to leave the vials alone until the whole arrangement is dismantled.
Handling between the counter and the table
Orchids come from tropical species and read cold as damage. The petal does not wilt in the ordinary way, it turns glassy at the edge, then brown, and it never recovers. A short walk from a car in winter without a proper sleeve is enough to produce spotting a day later, and a draught from a door or an air conditioner does the same thing more slowly by drying the petal edge.
So the wrap on this bouquet has a job beyond looks. It should close over the top of the flowers rather than leaving them exposed, and it stays on until the bouquet is indoors and at room temperature.
What you get for that care is a long standing life. Cut orchid sprays outlast almost anything they are paired with, which is why the roses in the same arrangement tend to go first.
One more thing to expect. The buds at the tip of a spray usually stay closed for good once the stem has been cut, so the flowers you can see are the flowers you have paid for, and a seller counting unopened tips into the total is counting generously. If the person in Samui receiving this has never handled orchid bouquets before, that single sentence saves an argument.
