Suzanne Shep­pard

Fri­day com­ing is Valen­tine's Day, one of the biggest days for flower sales in this coun­try. But where do most of the ros­es and chrysan­the­mums that make up those flo­ral ex­pres­sions of love come from? The sur­pris­ing an­swer is Colom­bia, one of T&T's clos­est Latin Amer­i­can neigh­bours and the sec­ond largest ex­porter of flow­ers in the world.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and No­vem­ber last year, T&T im­port­ed US$923,981 worth of fresh flow­ers and live plants from Colom­bia. Apart from Valen­tine's Day, the sea­sons of high de­mand for flow­ers here are Moth­er's Day, the June/Ju­ly wed­ding sea­son and Christ­mas.

Car­los Gon­za­lez, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Caribbean, for Proex­port Colom­bia, the agency re­spon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing that coun­try's non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ports, in­ter­na­tion­al tourism and for­eign in­vest­ment, said T&T is the sec­ond largest im­porter of Colom­bian flow­ers in the Caribbean. In this re­gion, Puer­to Ri­co is the largest im­porter and oth­er sig­nif­i­cant mar­kets are Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

"There are 24 com­pa­nies from T&T cur­rent­ly im­port­ing Colom­bian cut flow­ers. Nine of those com­pa­nies are re­spon­si­ble for 90 per cent of the to­tal im­ports," he told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view.The T&T im­porters in­clude Flow­ers 137, Nee­sha Amin, Mul­ti­flo­ra In­ter­na­tion­al, Keville Red­man, Flower Time, White­field Corp/Caribbean Flow­ers, Bloe­men Trad­ing CV, Caribbean-Flower and Flower Line.

Gon­za­lez said Colom­bia ex­ports more than US$1 bil­lion in flow­ers every year. It is the coun­try's top non-tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al ex­port and the in­dus­try gen­er­ates more than 120,000 jobs di­rect­ly.The ad­van­tage in get­ting flow­ers from Colom­bia, he said, is the easy process for get­ting them to the Caribbean, as well as the com­pet­i­tive prices, high qual­i­ty and fast de­liv­ery times.

Gon­za­lez said Colom­bia has been ex­port­ing flow­ers for the past 40 years and ded­i­cates over 7,200 hectares to grow­ing these blooms. Be­cause of the coun­try's unique sun­light, hu­mid­i­ty, tem­per­a­ture and soil fer­til­i­ty, the re­gion pro­duces the largest va­ri­ety of ex­ot­ic flow­ers in the world, with more than 1,500 dif­fer­ent species of flow­ers.

Colom­bia is the top glob­al pro­duc­er of car­na­tions, in­clud­ing unique bi­colour car­na­tions that come in a va­ri­ety of hues. The coun­try is al­so a world leader in al­stromelia pro­duc­tion. Oth­er pop­u­lar flow­ers in­clude chrysan­the­mums and ger­bera daisies, which come in hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent species and colours.

The coun­try's tra­di­tion­al red Free­dom ros­es are the flow­ers with the high­est de­mand around Valen­tine's Day, al­though there is al­so an in­creased de­mand for al­stroe­me­ria, chrysan­the­mums, he­li­co­nias and full bou­quets. The great­est de­mand in T&T is for cut ros­es and chrysan­the­mums, Gon­za­lez said.It is es­ti­mat­ed that over the next few days, ahead of Feb­ru­ary 14, Colom­bia will be ship­ping out more than 500 mil­lion flow­ers to its over­seas mar­kets.

The flo­ral con­nec­tion be­tween T&T and Colom­bia has to do with much more than im­port and ex­ports, how­ev­er. Colom­bia's Proflo­ra Fair, host­ed every two years by Aso­colflo­res–the As­so­ci­a­tion of Colom­bian Flower Ex­porters–at­tracts in­ter­est from around the world and tourists and buy­ers from this coun­try are among the thou­sands who reg­u­lar­ly at­tend the event."The first Proflo­ra Fair was held in 1991 in Bo­go­ta," said Gon­za­lez. "In 2011, more than 300 flower com­pa­nies from 15 coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ed."

He said the 2015 edi­tion, sched­uled for Medellin, will co­in­cide with an­oth­er ma­jor at­trac­tion, the city's Flower Fes­ti­val which of­fers more than 140 cul­tur­al, tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern events. At­trac­tions in­clude a horse fair, an or­ches­tra fes­ti­val, the na­tion­al tro­va fes­ti­val where singers are in­volved in du­els of im­pro­vised vers­es, an old and clas­sic car pa­rade and mu­sic fes­ti­vals.

The high point is the Sil­leteros pa­rade where farm­ers cre­ate beau­ti­ful arrange­ments on a sil­leta (a chair-like con­trap­tion for car­ry­ing flow­ers on a per­son's back). This pa­rade is recog­nised as a cul­tur­al her­itage of Colom­bia.