365 Days of Floral Education - Days 176 - 180

As part of our 125^th Anniversary celebration at Stein Your Florist Co. we are sharing a year of floral education, November 1, 2012 thru October 31, 2013. Each day we will post something new on our Facebook page to share our knowledge of our favorite things, flowers and plants and we'll be updating our blog every 5 days or so. No need for pencils and notebooks, just sharing some simple lessons in floristry.

Day 176 - Hen and chicks (also known as Hen-and-chickens, or Hen-and-biddies in the American South) is a common name for a group of small succulent plants belonging to the flowering plant family Crassulaceae, native to Europe and northern Africa. They grow close to the ground with leaves formed around each other in a rosette, and propagating by offsets. The "hen" is the main plant, and the "chicks" are the offspring, which start as tiny buds on the main plant and soon sprout their own roots, taking up residence close to the mother plant.

Day 177 - Tropical foliages are widely available from Central and South America. They tend to be very long lasting. As with all tropicals these foliages should not be exposed to temperatures below 15 degrees celsius. Regular misting of tropical foliages helps to keep them fresh and last longer.

Day 178 - Alstroemerias are best known as cut flowers, where their rich colors and lovely veining grace many a vase, where they'll last for as long as two weeks. But they can also be grown in the garden, where they do best in light, well-drained soil. They bloom freely through the summer and come in almost all shades of the rainbow except true blue.

Day 179 – Hanging amaranthus, amaranthus caudatus, is a species of annual flowering plant. It goes by common names such as love-lies-bleeding, love-lies-a'bleeding, pendant amaranth, tassel flower, velvet flower, foxtail amaranth, and quilete. It can grow anywhere from 3 to 8 feet in height, and grows best in full sun. It can handle a variety of conditions, both humid and arid. It is easily grown from seed. In most of its range, it is planted as a summer annual. In temperate regions, plants can be started indoors in early spring and transplanted outdoors after the last frost.

Day 180 - A pseudanthium (Greek for "false flower") or flower head is a special type of inflorescence, in which anything from a small cluster to hundreds or sometimes thousands of flowers are grouped together to form a single flower-like structure. Pseudanthia take various forms. The individual flowers of a pseudanthium commonly are called florets. The real flowers (the florets) are generally small and often greatly reduced, but the pseudanthium itself can sometimes be quite large (as in the heads of some varieties of sunflower and gerbera daisy.