CRAZE FOR FLOWERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1943, Page 4

CRAZE FOR FLOWERS

HIGH PRICES IN SYDNEY. SYDNEY, October 23. Flower prices have reached a record in Sydney, some varieties being 500 per cent higher than before the war'. Keenest buyers are service men, particularly Americans, who, in the company of a girl, cannot resist a flower shop or stall. It is common to see orchid sprays costing a guinea bedecking a young office or factory girl who had never previously asked for more than an artificial bouquet or a sixpenny bunch of violets. Although they cannot compete with Americans on the same lavish scale, Australian service men are also “saying it with flowers.” Self-conscious but dogged, tough-looking “Diggers” crowd into trams and trains zealously guarding bunches of flowers which they are taking to their girl friends. Some - of the wholesale prices being obtained for flowers are:—Sweet peas, ,18s to 24s a dozen bunches (normal price, 6s to 9s); snapdragons, £1 to £1 5s a dozen bunches (normal price, 6s to 9s); poppies, 10s to 15s a 1000 (normal October price, ss). Some retail shops are charging Is a bloom for roses and 5s for a spray of two roses and a little fern.