Over Lunar New Year and up to Easter, my local shopping centre was transformed into a cherry-blossom-festooned “Barbieland” providing infinite Instagrammable opportunities for shoppers, families and romancing couples. Yards away, the passageways to the shopping centre’s toilets and its underground car parks were cheered up by large walls of flowers and other plants.
While many still use plastic, they nowadays use much more silk and other materials. Extraordinary innovation means that many fake flowers are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Meticulous botanical imitation and the use of 3D printing deceive all but the closest examination. Even floral fragrances can be deployed, with some fake flowers infused with materials that transform water into a sugar solution which can attract butterflies and insects. tall faux olive tree
The fake flower business still has a long way to grow to match the global cut-flower industry. Good data is hard to find, but a few marketing research organisations converge around a global “permanent botanicals” market of close to US$2 billion a year – compared to a global cut-flower market of more than US$35 billion, dominated by the Netherlands and Colombia.
But it has grown large enough to raise the hackles of those involved in the “real” flower business.
The shop making traditional flower plaque backdrops for Hong Kong celebrations for 66 years
People have deeply metaphysical objections. Novelist Freya Berry wrote in the Financial Times that “to live is to change and be changed. Leaves bud and fall, flowers bloom and wither, but the fake plant offers only deathless eternity. It won’t rot, yet nor will it blossom. It won’t die, but nor will it live.
“Real plants decay and die. So do we. Perhaps that is why artificial ones are such an aberration.”
Others respond with satire. Nat Bletter’s 2007 “paper” on “Artificiae Plantae” set out to explore this “botanical curiosity”, writing: “It is a genuine scientific conundrum, as the taxa lack genetic material, appear virtually immortal and have the ability to form inter-genetic crosses with ease, despite lacking any evident mechanism for cross-fertilisation.” Curiously, “there seems to be no limit to the habitats”, he noted, “except perhaps in the wild”.
Much of the criticism of artificial flowers is environmental: they are made in factories, use plastics and possibly dangerous chemicals, and end up in landfills. But it is here that the defenders of real botanicals are at their weakest, because the cut-flower business also has poor environmental credentials.
Indian man turns sacred flowers into incense sticks to save polluted Ganges river
Flowers require the intensive use of water, pesticides and fertilisers, often rely on artificially heated greenhouses, and are transported by air to the main consumer markets in Europe and North America. And because they live for such a short time, they also account for large volumes of waste, albeit degradable.
For any family forced to live through the long, bleak monochrome winters of northern Europe, resorting to artificial flowers must surely be forgivable, given the pleasure they give to so many.
There are also many (particularly large-scale) uses for which real flowers are ill-equipped. Plant walls may thrive in tropical Singapore or Dubai’s Miracle Garden, but struggle to survive the winters of New York or London. For today’s huge shopping centres, and other large spaces with low light, low temperatures or poor air flow, the choice is between artificial plants or none at all.
In South Korea, fake flowers have become popular at cemeteries, where it is considered disrespectful to the dead to leave graves unadorned or littered with dead or dying flowers.
For the many artisans in China who take huge pride in their innovation and craftsmanship in making artificial flowers, the argument that they are in some way “divorced from nature” can be unfair. They often show just as much passion, patience and persistence as the most earnest of gardeners.
As Sinofloral, a Chinese wholesale supplier of artificial flowers and other plants, boasts on its website, the sector’s growth reflects China’s “prowess in manufacturing and production”, adding: “The flowers produced are not merely imitations, but works of art.”
For those floral purists who still prickle at the proliferation of artificiae plantae, we should also remember the long human history of “faking it” – and not just with flowers. The Egyptians buried their dead with painted linen flowers. The Romans made gold and silver crowns of leaves for victorious gladiators. Rich Europeans decorated their walls with staggeringly realistic “still life” paintings.
So while I prefer fresh cut flowers wherever possible, I find it difficult to disdain our artificae plantae. We humans have a long history of trying to trick, control or imitate nature, but the pleasure we get from the real thing never seems to have dimmed.
artificial greenery David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades