Silver bouquets: reading the paint before you buy
Two rather different things are sold under one word. The first is built on grey foliage, where the colour belongs to the plant and stays put. The second is an ordinary bouquet finished with aerosol paint an hour before it goes out, and that one always leaves marks.
Neither is dishonest. What matters is knowing which one is in the wrapping, because the two behave nothing alike once they are standing in water.
Where paint gives itself away
Aerosol lands on the surface facing the can and nowhere else. Tip a rose towards the light and look into the throat: on a sprayed bloom the inner petals stay white or cream, because the nozzle never reached them, and the line between the treated and untreated part runs across the petal at an angle. The undersides of the leaves tell the same story. Silver on top, plain green underneath, is normal for sprayed work and impossible for a plant that grew that way. Look at the stems too, since a florist holds the bunch somewhere while spraying, and that grip usually leaves a clean band of green about a third of the way down.
Glitter is the harder version of the same thing.
Loose flakes carry on shedding for days. They come off on the wrapping paper, on the table under the vase, on a jumper and on the hands of whoever unties the bouquet, and no amount of shaking in the shop gets rid of them beforehand. Fixed glitter, laid into a thin coat of adhesive while it was still wet, stays on the petal and is worth asking about by name.
Paint costs the flower less than most people expect. A thin coat blocks a little light and slows the bloom down, so a sprayed rose opens more slowly over the week than the same rose left alone. A thick one is a different matter. It glues the petal edges together and the bud never opens at all, which is the only real damage worth watching for.
Water tells you nothing here, in contrast to stems dyed through the cut, where the colour comes up inside the plant and tints the vase.
Silver that is not paint at all
Eucalyptus, lamb's ear and dusty miller are grey because of a fine coat of hairs or wax on the leaf itself. Nothing rubs off, nothing sheds, and the tone holds until the foliage dries.
This kind of silver asks for company that suits it. Put ordinary bright green alongside and the grey reads as faded, as though the bunch had been standing about for a week. Against deep red, near black or plain white the same leaf looks deliberate and the whole bunch settles.
Practical notes
Ask for the bouquet to be wrapped in paper rather than cellophane if it is travelling any distance, because a sealed sleeve traps condensation and paint softens where the water sits.
Silver bouquets suit winter dates and formal occasions better than a summer birthday, and they photograph best under daylight. A courier in Side will hand over something that looks metallic in the street and considerably warmer under a kitchen lamp, since silver picks up whatever colour the room is lit with.
If the silver has to last beyond the fresh flowers, the useful part is the foliage. Eucalyptus dries well hanging upside down in a dark cupboard and keeps most of its grey. It will go on standing in a dry vase long after the roses have been thrown out.
