Today I had anticipated that rose supply might loosen up a little but it still remains constricted. Boxes are arriving tonight from the farms and we are inching our way towards completing the pre-books. Some colors are completely unavailable, especially some pinks, but Mayesh has secured an impressive selection of Red roses; the current most popular red "Freedom" dominates the orders, with a close second in popularity "Forever Young". Mayesh has also secured the superb "Sexy Red", the classic deep velvet "Black Magic" (my personal favorite) as well as the new "Red Paris" which is very nice, "Tinto", "Luna Rossa" as well as a modicum of old school reds such as "Red Unique", "Classy", "Rouge Baiser" and "Charlotte".Notwithstanding the high demand for reds, we are seeing strong requests for colored roses as well, perhaps in response to the female sense and sensibilities.
As a gauge of the availability, or lack thereof, of roses in Ecuador, I have created my own "Indicator" by regularly observing the supply, complexion and quality of flowers at the little flower stand in front of the "Corfu Cafe" at the intersection of Portugal and Shyris in central Quito. The Corfu Cafe is a very well-known, popular coffee and ice-cream shop for the "toute-Quito" and is located in the heart of a business distruict intermingled with rather ritzy condos. The clientele are well-to-do folks, and they also buy their flowers at the flower stand opposite.
Today the stand had very few roses, perhaps 8 or 9 buckets of pretty awful flowers, perhaps suitable for rose-petals, but even then some of the blooms were so mushy they might not even be viable as petals. Note the sign that states 25 roses for a $1, and most of them might not be worth that. Normally this stand has 20 to 25 buckets of pretty decent roses, so the PCRA indicator projects a continuing tight rose supply. They have no red roses for sale.
Are you familiar with the Big Mac Index? This strikes me as a similarly brilliant observation.
ReplyDelete(Please accept my apologies if my attempt at an embedded link backfires; sometimes I struggle with this blogging thing.)
A similar sort of idea as the Big Mac Index, although that is used to compare relative value of currency through out the world.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input, much appreciated.
Hehe. I just got a great mental image of plump Big Macs cascading over cafe counters or looking sparse and pathetic in two and threes, depending on their relative scarcity (as with your PCRA). But yes, I meant they seem like similar observations in that they're both natural indicators, which is intriguing stuff. So often economic theories seem so theoretical; it's fun to see them in action in real world situations like these : ). Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHope you are well and somewhat insulated from the oncoming craziness! Best of luck in the coming weekend.
Could anyone tell me what the scientific names of these roses would be? (Forever Young or Freedom).
ReplyDeleteI know the Genus is Rosa but what would the species be?
Thanks!
Stephanie, you are correct in that the genus is Rosa, but all the modern hybrids are cultivars within the genus. Therefore the scientific name for Freedom would be Rosa "Freedom".
ReplyDeleteRosa has about 150 species in the genus, but these are almost never used in cut flower production, except as a rootstock. Species roses tend to wild, with diminutive flowers, and are used in creating hybrids. All the roses used today for cut flowers and in gardens are hybrids created by mankind over the last 2000 years.