Bouquet "Flower of Gold"

A copper chrysanthemum bouquet built on a single variety, Vienna Copper. These are disbuds: the grower removes every side bud so that each stem carries one flower and all of its strength. The petals curl inward like ribbons into a loose sphere, cream at the edge, copper further in, tipped with claret around a gold centre. Large, theatrical, slightly unruly, and not something you will find in a supermarket bucket. The variety is only cut from August to mid-November, which is why I wait for autumn.

Italy shares France's habit of keeping chrysanthemums for the dead. When the Duke of Aosta died in January 1890, Puccini wrote an elegy for string quartet in a single night and called it Crisantemi: seven minutes of mourning, named after a flower.

The flower reached France in 1789, the year of the Revolution, when the Marseille captain Pierre Blancard brought cuttings home from China. Its sentence came in November 1919. For the first anniversary of the Armistice, the French were asked to put flowers on soldiers' graves, and at that time of year almost nothing else was still in bloom. In China, meanwhile, it stands for long life.

This bouquet is out of mourning. It is for a November birthday, a dinner that runs late, someone who wears the unfashionable on purpose.

Other colours exist; message me on WhatsApp before you order to see what is in this week.

Delivered in Paris, Monday to Saturday; delivery is free from €100.