FLOWER MARKET

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 6, 2 October 1943, Page 4

FLOWER MARKET

Spring’s Brilliant Offering

Though there be grey skies above there is invariably plenty of colour, laughter and high spirits at the Wellington flower market. Probably 90 per cent, of the flowers sold in retail premises in the capital go through the markets, where they are sold to Europeans anil Asiastics, regardless of politics, colour or creed, and that without anything but the friendliest ‘bickering and trade jokes, which only those iii tlie business can appreciate. Great heaps of sweet-pea blossoms, red, white, pink and mauve, rub stems with neat bunches of aristocratic tulips and long-stemmed, exclusive irises, while heaps of cream and white freesias (the aroma of whose sweetness pervades the air) stare wide-eyed at mounds of poppies, long-stemmed and mostly in the bud. There is also a profusion of hyacinth blooms, a few elegant pink carnations (evidently hothouse raised), and many boxes of anemones in the richest tones.

To the outsider the prices paid for flowers appear to be high. Large bunches of pink sweetpeas, for example, brought £1 yesterday morning, and those' with shorter stems and not quite so choice realized from 12/- io 16/6 a bunch. Nodding drowsy-headed tulips were sold by the dozen, the price ranging from ■"/- to 5/-. according to colour and quality. Poppies, with tlie much-desired long stems, also brought good prices, while comparatively insignificant, bunches of pink, white and purple hyacinth realized 4/- and 5/-. So far flowers, like the air, the sunshine, the wind and the rain, have no fixed prices. Chinese buyers arc just about us numerous as Europeans, and, to judge by their buying, are as keenly alive to market reqjiii'ejiients as their white-skinned rivals. Women buyers are also to the fore. For the most, part they do not bid vocally. They raise a forefinger and keep it raised till they think they have gone far enough. The final pointed finger secures the lot.