The Most Popular Flowers in the US

What Americans actually buy, and the official flower of every state

📖 6 min read 🌸 US Market

An American flower market stall filled with buckets of roses, carnations, chrysanthemums and lilies

Ask which flowers Americans love and you will hear roses, and that is true for one week of the year. Ask which flowers Americans actually buy, week in and week out, and the answer is a good deal less romantic. The American flower trade runs on price, vase life and two enormous holidays, and what fills the buckets in a US shop reflects all three.

What Americans actually buy

Roses are the flower Americans name and the flower they give, but they are not the flower a shop moves most of across a year. The steady volume sits with the flowers that survive a hot car and a week on a kitchen table: carnations, chrysanthemums and alstroemeria. All three are cheap, all three last two weeks or better, and all three turn up in mixed bouquets far more often than anybody notices, because nobody buys a bouquet by asking for them.

The supermarket is a bigger part of the picture in the United States than most people assume. A large share of stems sold here never pass through a florist at all, which is why the flowers that ship well and hold up under fluorescent light have quietly become the ones the country buys most of.

The ranked list of what leads worldwide, and why each one earns its place, is in the top ten most popular flowers.

The two weeks that decide the year

Two occasions dominate American flower buying to a degree that has no equivalent in most other countries. Valentine's Day is the single biggest DAY, and it is the only day of the year when the price of one flower moves on its own. Mother's Day is the biggest WEEK by volume, and it spreads across a far wider mix, because nobody is obliged to send roses to their mother.

The difference matters if you are buying. Valentine's demand is concentrated on red roses and the price reflects it, so anything else is better value that week. Mother's Day demand is spread across peonies, tulips, lilies, hydrangeas and mixed garden bouquets, so the premium is smaller and the choice is wider.

Valentine's Day flowers Mother's Day flowers

Where American flowers actually grow

Most cut flowers sold in the United States were not grown in it. The great majority arrive from Colombia and Ecuador, flown into Miami and trucked out across the country from there, which is why a rose bought in Ohio in February has usually travelled several thousand miles to get there.

There is a real domestic industry underneath that. California grows a large share of what is cut in this country, the Pacific Northwest supplies bulbs and peonies, and small local growers have expanded steadily on the back of the demand for seasonal, locally grown flowers.

Worth knowing

Colombia did not become the flower capital of the Americas by accident. The reasons are a matter of altitude, daylight and one piece of trade policy, and they are covered properly in a piece of their own on this site. Why so many American flowers are grown in Colombia.

The official flower of every state

Every state has an official flower, and a fair number of them are flowers you can actually buy. Some were chosen by schoolchildren, some by legislatures settling an argument, and several commemorate an industry that has since disappeared. Each one below links to the florists in that state.

Kansas is the one that pulls double duty. The sunflower is a state emblem and a serious commercial cut flower, which almost none of the others are.
Massachusetts protects its mayflower by law. It cannot legally be picked.
Tennessee ran an argument long enough that it ended up with two, an official cultivated flower and an official wildflower, one title each.
Arkansas chose the apple blossom in 1901, when the northwest of the state was apple country. The orchards have largely gone and the emblem has not.

Explore Our Flower Directory

Browse detailed guides for every flower mentioned in this article

View All Flowers