Few people realise that when they buy at a florist (or even large supermarkets or chain stores), the flowers often come from thousands of miles away in other countries and may have been picked a week, two weeks or even more ago! It's a HUGE business. Flowers are picked, treated to slow decay and cooled, then flown to a few large distribution and auction sites in different countries. There, wholesale florist companies buy daily and sell to retail florists and stores, and the wholesalers truck them there. Quite the journey for a bouquet of flowers that may be made up of blooms from many countries!