World's Biggest Flower Bouquet?

A widely published story last Friday about India's President A P J Abdul Kalam being presented with the world's biggest flower bouquet, consisting of over 175,000 flowers and standing 15 feet high, probably raised a few eyebrows in Pasadena, CA.

While most consumers generally use the term 'bouquet' to mean any type of arranged flowers, florists typically reserve the word to describe a grouping, created in the hand, to be carried. Wedding bouquets, presentation bouquets and traditional gift bouquets are the most common types.

President Kalam's massive design, created for New Delhi's International Flora Expo 2006, was indeed a technical marvel. It featured numerous varieties of anthurium and roses, which had been tightly grouped to create strong lines of color. Engineering the structure to support both the weight of the flowers and the water needed to keep them fresh was undoubtedly a challenge.

But is that flower display a 'bouquet' or would it be more appropriately classified as an arrangement or floral design?  And what's that got to do with Pasadena?

Home of the Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena hosts the annual New Year's Day event and features 50 moving 'flower bouquets', many which exceed that 15' height.  Originally the maximum was set at 17' so the flower covered floats could pass under bridges along the parade route but with advances in float engineering, these mobile bouquets now reach heights of 50'.  

Both the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) float from 2005 and 2006's Bayer Advanced "Jack and the Rose Stalk" used more than 750,000 flowers and stood 50' tall.

As far as current records go, The Guinness Book of Records credits the title 'largest bouquet' to a design of 156,940 roses created at a shopping center in Frankfurt, Germany in 2005. I also spotted a Portuguese florist's ad showing their 2001 record-holding hand-tied bouquet of 518 roses.

Perhaps Suresh Joachim and his bride are the true title holders of 'biggest bouquet' for their 2003 wedding flower cascade that measured 197 feet long.  I hope the aisle was at least 200' or part of it never got past the parking lot.   

Records are meant to be broken so I'll keep watching for more super-sized floral designs.  

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