Inside the Supply Chain of the Global Flower Industry

A flower’s growing location and its breeder can be in different countries. There may also be another nursery between them, producing the young plants that a flower farm buys. So “grown in Colombia,” for example, tells you something useful about a bunch of flowers, but it won’t necessarily identify the company licensing the variety or the source of the starter plants.

That distinction runs through my research on Danziger. It also helps explain why a local flower farm can buy into an international breeding program, why one company’s catalogue contains another company’s plants, and why a florist can have a country of origin on a box without enough information to check a breeder exclusion. There are two connected businesses here: producing and selling the plants used to grow a crop, then producing and selling the cut flowers harvested from them.

Breeding and permission to propagate

Breeders develop and select varieties for characteristics that growers and buyers will pay for: flower form and color, stem strength, productivity, disease resistance, or performance after transport. The breeder may hold intellectual-property rights, license another company to propagate a plant, or work with a company that markets and distributes it. Those arrangements determine who can produce the material and on what terms. The business named on an invoice might perform only one of those jobs.

Danziger identifies Million Stars and XLence gypsophila among its varieties and describes licensing plants to propagators and growers. Its company profile also says that its portfolio includes material from other breeders. A Danziger sales relationship therefore needs to be identified more precisely than “Danziger genetics.” The Terra Nova partnership is one example: Terra Nova provides the breeding material for a cutting program in which Danziger is a licensed producer.

From stock plants to a grower’s field

Propagation turns selected plant material into enough young plants for commercial production. Cuttings can be taken from maintained stock plants and rooted into liners. Tissue culture uses small pieces of plant material multiplied under controlled laboratory conditions, then rooted and acclimatized. Terra Nova’s description of that process follows plants from tissue in a growing medium to trays ready for greenhouse production. This is a separate operation from growing stems for a florist.

Danziger lists propagation facilities in Israel, Guatemala, Kenya, and Colombia. Its November 2023 Moss Hill Foliage announcement gives a more specific route: cuttings for the Floresta foliage program produced in Guatemala, then rooted by a partner in Florida for North American growers. The Florida stage adds a U.S. producer to that route. The upstream production arrangement continues to be part of it.

Small farms enter these systems through young-plant suppliers as well. Gro ’n Sell, in Pennsylvania, describes producing trays from seed, cuttings, tissue culture, and rhizomes using material from more than thirty breeders. Farmer Bailey sells wholesale quantities of young plants to farms of different sizes. A supplier can make this material accessible to a small grower without that grower contracting directly with the breeder or operating a propagation facility. The specific products and relationships belong in an order-level check; I maintain those separately in the Farmer Bailey and Ball Seed guides.

Growing and moving the finished flowers

The cut-flower grower raises the crop, schedules harvests, grades the stems, and packs them for sale. This farm controls growing practices and harvest decisions within its own operation. It may have bought the plants under a production agreement, but that does not make it the breeder. Nor does the breeder necessarily own the farm.

Colombia’s flower production is concentrated around Bogotá and in Antioquia, including the Rionegro Valley. In its March 24, 2026 report, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service reports Colombia’s share of U.S. flower imports at about 60 percent by value. Its separate 75 percent figure concerns the proportion of Colombian flower export volume sent to the United States in 2025.

Correction: An earlier version gave Colombia’s share of U.S. flower imports as 75 percent. The revised figure above specifies the report’s value basis.

Exporters and importers arrange the cross-border movement of the finished crop. Cold storage and temperature-controlled transport help preserve it while freight, customs, and distribution are coordinated. Agricultural inspection is performed by the responsible authorities, rather than by a wholesaler certifying its own shipment. APHIS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection work together at U.S. ports of entry to inspect for plant pests and other agricultural risks.

A wholesaler then assembles stock from growers and importers for its customers, which can include independent florists, event designers, and retailers. Some businesses combine several of these functions, and some farms sell directly. The Dutch trade is similarly more varied than “everything goes through an auction”: Royal FloraHolland operates both auction and direct-trade channels. Passing through a Dutch marketplace does not establish that a flower was grown in the Netherlands.

What reaches the order sheet

The information needed to sell a stem is not always enough to establish its breeding and production history. Crop, color, stem length, grade, quantity, and delivery date may be sufficient to fill a design order. A buyer applying a breeder exclusion needs the variety and producer as well. For example, Mayesh’s published product guide includes the category “Gypsophila white assorted.” That is a category description, not evidence identifying the breeder of any particular bunch.

The information gap can occur when named varieties are grouped under a generic sales category, when a substitution is made, or when the retailer’s description omits information available farther upstream. It should not automatically be described as concealment. Sometimes the invoice, sleeve, box label, or grower’s records can answer the question; sometimes the seller cannot supply enough detail to identify the material. In that case, the origin remains unresolved. Appearance alone cannot fill it in.

My boycott work concerns those upstream relationships as well as finished flowers grown in Israel. The Danziger article explains the connection to Palestinian dispossession and my sourcing decisions within the wider Palestinian-led BDS movement. When a supplier confirms a named variety, keep that name with the order and specify whether substitutions are acceptable. Otherwise, the research attached to the original selection may say very little about the flowers that arrive.