sweet peas because of their delicacy, delicious scent and simplicity. oh sweet pea!

Hydrangeas, oh my...
They make delicate "poofs" of GORGEOUS, GORGEOUS color!
Poof!

just one? gosh. i love them all!

i have a particular soft spot for gerber daisies. when i was in high school, i used to joke with my boyfriend that i liked gerber daisies because they were "fat, friendly, and colorful," just like me. i didn't think they were the prettiest flowers, but i liked them. towards the end of my first semester of my senior year, i had to give a MAJOR presentation in order to graduate with a special, sort of "super honors" diploma, and i was nervous as hell. i was walking to my car, and there he was, sitting on the ground just outside the building, waiting for me, with an arm full of gerber daisies. so, i don't have a favorite, but you can imagine why i have a certain attachment to those daisies.

needless to say, we're still together, almost seven years later.

i have a similar story about roses, but you said to pick only one. :)

Orchids. My beloved 91-year-old grandfather maintains a lush greenhouse, and for many years he has hybridized orchids and shown them at orchid shows worldwide. Whenever I see orchids of any type, I think of him, his incredible greenhouse filled with blooms of all shapes, sizes and colors, and how he's always waiting to see if a new hybridization experiment will be a success or failure.

The best part: whenever he creates a particularly pretty new orchid, he names it after family members or friends. I must say, it's lovely to have a flower named after me! (It's a medium-sized bloom in blood red with yellow spots, by the way.)

Ranunculus. I don't know why, but I've always loved the shape - in between a rose and a tulip, with that lovely spindly stem. When I got married in March (a year and a half ago), I convinced my florist to poke red and pink ranunculus in our bouquets alongside the tulips and daffodils. I have to say that I liked my flowers better than any I saw in the wedding magazines!

My favorite flower is a lupine which is native to the San Francisco Bay Area. You can see the beautiful purple blooms bursting out against the green hilltops at spring. What's truly special about this plant though, is that it has a completely symbiotic relationship to the native and endangered Mission Blue butterfly. In the winter, the caterpillars are dormant on the roots of the lupine, and in spring the larvae feed on the leaves. In early summer, the beautiful blue butterflies come out and polinate the flowers and lay tiny eggs on the lupine leaves. The eggs hatch and feed on the plant, and then the cycle begins again. If only we could have such a happy marriage with our environment!

If I had to pick one, definetly Ranunculus, they are almost a hybrid of some of my other favorites, poppies and roses. They have so many delicate pedals tightly together creates a beautiful pattern and they come in so many gorgeous colors.

Grape hyacinth (muscari). As the first harbingers of spring after a long, dull, dreary, gray winter, it's so cheery to see green leaves and that deep purply-blue -- and the lovely sweet smell hints at the promise of warmer weather.

When my husband and I first started dating, I mentioned to him how much I loved flowers, though I'd never gotten a bouquet from anyone ever. He told me that he would never buy a girl a bouquet because every time he did, they'd broken up a short while later. We got married in 2003, and he still never bought me flowers....and I was ok with that.

Fast forward to 2004:::

I was preparing for my thesis show and defense, had family members staying in my one bedroom apartment, was interviewing for a new job, and studying for my last finals before graduating. My defense ran WAY longer than scheduled, but I passed. I came home to a (miraculously) empty apartment with a bouquet of asiatic lilies on the table and the following note:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

But that doesn't matter, because these are freaking lilies!

And I'm proud of you

He did it. He bought me flowers.

And we're still married. :)

Hydrangeas, because they're absolutely beautiful.

My favorite flowers by far are Gardenias. Their beautiful white blooms and amazing scent bring back memories of the large bush that grew outside my bedroom window as a child. Every year I eagerly awaited spring and those blossoms and kept my windows open for as long as possible so the whole house would smell good!

Lilies... I'm a sucker for lilies. Sadly, Easter lilies remind me of funerals and church. But we had tiger lilies growing in our garden growing up, and they always remind me of home. Casablanca lilies and stargazer lilies also look gorgeous in a bouquet.

Red Clover (Trifolium pratense). Generally considered a weed, and pretty invasive in rural areas, but I often find them growing along edges of parking lots and other neglected city spaces. I pick a few and put them in a little jar on my desk. Reduces future weeds outside, brightens my space inside.

Ranunculus 'cause they're so heavy with petal they bend lazily on their stems like listless Southern Belles settee-bound by their weighty dresses. More importantly, their name sounds like an adjective from cuteoverload.com as in: "Look at that behbeh kitteh snorgling with Tiny McTurtlekins. It's just RANUNCULUSLY cute!" Cute Overload is girl porn. No two ways about it.

Is this only for SF residents?

My favorite flower is the Lotus (pictured on your vase). I love Water Lilies almost equally, but given the choice I’d take the true Lotus. Since I’m not a yoga fan or follower of Eastern religion, my love is based purely on the aesthetics of the blossom itself.

Lotus come in a variety of colors but the various shades of PINK are by far it’s best hues. Considering their large size, a pond full of pink Lotus must be a profoundly soothing sight. No other color has such an immediate and positive effect on my state of mind. On top of that Lotus have so many layers of petals they’re the living definition of the word “lush.” Even there pods are gorgeous before/after the petals have gone.

And Lotus are truly hardy. Pods can live for 100 years or so with viable seeds. I wish I could grow some in my tiny NYC apartment, but first I’d like to visit South Asia and buy a bouquet of cut Lotus at the market and stay long enough to enjoy them until all the petals have fallen off.

Oh, and did I mention that the shape of Lotus petals is so distinct that it is continually repeated in architecture and design of all sorts? I'm continually amazed at all the items you can find that reflect it in either simple or complex renderings.

I've always had a hard time with long distance - it puts a strain on all my relationships, from romance to family. So when I fell in love wiht a guy in Palo Alto while in college in Davis, it was difficult, with the added distraction of not having a car.

One Friday, as soon as class got out, I hopped on the train heading south. Once I hit San Jose, I had to get on ANOTHER train to head back up to Palo Alto. As we pulled into the Stanford station, there he was, in a suit, holding one, longstem sunflower. at 6'5. it was the only flower he could hold without making them look completely dwarved. They've been my favorite, ever since.

Tulips, specifically those given to me by my first real boyfriend. He's long gone, but the sight of a tulip still brings a smile to my face. It's nice when you get to a point where you can forget the nasty stuff and remember the sweet memories.

Lavender, because of the many varieties that exist out there, it's resilience to the weather (well, except in my apartment), great scent, and because it is edible. I love that the delicate flowers sit upon a narrow stalk and are all clustered together, and that the lavender bushes will spread out and grow more or less on their own.

The many varied uses of lavender (it's really good in bean soup...), besides being decorative, make it my favorite. Tulips are a close second though.

Daffodils are my favorite flowers, not because they're beautiful but because they aren't. Really, they're goofy-looking flowers, kind of awkward, the floral equivalent of ducks or donkeys or that guy in high school who never quite adjusted to his growth spurt. The thing about daffodils, though, is that they don't care. If flowers had emotions, daffodils would always be happy, not because they don't realize they're not pretty but because the sun is out and the sky is blue and the trees are green, and who has time to worry about things like that when the world is bursting with life and possibility?

Amaryllis, because in the winter when I really really NEED something to get through the early dark and gray days these flowers are so spectacular that all I need is one.

Zinnias. My parents kept this gigantic garden when I was a kid, and my mom always planted a thick row of zinnias along the front end, so when you looked out of the back of the house, zinnias were the first thing you saw in the garden. Such a distinct and sweet childhood memory for me, whenever I see them they make me all warm inside.

Lady J - Thanks for entering! The Giveaway is indeed open to everyone.

Cactus blooms - cacti can be so stand-offish with all of those prickly thorns just waiting to attack you. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they shoot up a huge, bright, showy flower. You have to be quick to enjoy it because it only lasts a day or two. It's as if they are letting you in on a secret.

My favorite flowers are miniature roses. When I was very young, I found a book of Frida Kahlo's paintings in the public library, and thus began my obsession with her art. I used to pour over her work in borrowed books, and always loved the way she depicted nature in her paintings - so bold, and sharp and colorful. My mother forbade me to bring any books with Frida's paintings into the house, because she is not well acquainted with art of any kind, and shallowly felt that Frida's art was "morbid" and "sick." I carried on a secret childhood love affair with Frida, and in the fifth grade, we had a "wax museum" where all of the children dressed up as a famous person they admired. I devised a truly elaborite Frida costume, using a refrigerator box and painting a frame around a hole in it, that I would sit behind while kids toured the "wax museum." I was depicting Frida in one of her famous self portraits. My costume was complete with an eyeliner uni brow, and a bun with miniature roses in it, lifted from our neighbor's garden. When I see miniature roses, I'm always reminded of how proud I was of my costume, and how proud I am of myself now for continuing my worthwhile obsession with art, even though my mother may not quite understand it.

The daisy because it's simple and pretty

Pale daffodils - a special flower that always looks like it's mid-sneeze.

I love peach roses. So delicate, unusual, sensual, romantic and beautiful! My husband bought me a dozen of these when we were dating and he didn't know at the time that peach roses were my favorite. I was all gaga over them and finally told him that these particular ones were my favorite. He has bought me others over the 10 years that we've been married.

blogged ya: http://laurawilliamsmusings.blogspot.com/2007/11/thursday-edition-of-contests-galore_15.html

i would have to say...lilacs. i'll never forget the lilacs that bloomed in the spring time in front of the apartment building where i was born. my father would lift me up to smell them, which back then seemed so high up. whenever i smell lilacs now, it takes me back to those moments.

Daisies.

Its simplicity: white petals surrounds a yellow center. I'm sure you remember drawing them at one time or another, because it was easy to. Its anatomy is simple, everything is visible and there's not much to it. Its simplicity is what so appealing to me: I can have one daisy sitting in an old glass jar on my desk or a couple bunch up together on the kitchen table. Not too much fuss, in my opinion, with the daisies.

Additionally, they're the only ones I can draw. I have no artistic ability; the daisies are the only object that I can draw since my graduation from stick figures.

Note that with its long slender stem, one daisy would fit lovely in the narrow test tube of this vase.

First of all, I love the idea of a collapsible vase which doesn't look like an elementary school art project. And this one is gorgeous.

Favorite flower - It's a 6-way tie. Orchids because I kill them, making them seductively, unattainably irresistible. Poppies because they are so contagiously happy. Nicotiana because they smell so amazing. Nasturtium because it's awesome to put flowers on your food. Crocus because they are the first sign of spring. Dandelions because they just don't give a shit, and I respect that.

The flower from the Catalpa Tree is my favorite - it's a delicate white blossom that blooms for about 1 week in the early summer, breaking up the intense green of the gigantic, smooth catalpa leaves. My husband and I got married underneath an old catalpa tree in bloom on a family property - a huge surprise for us since we'd somehow always missed this part of the tree's cycle. It was somewhat magical to know that was the one weekend that year that the blossoms were able to be enjoyed.

Oriental lilies are far and away my favorites. Generous fragrance, gorgeous colors, who could as for more? For why without words visit the plant therapy post: Jacks Lilies.

I love Gerbera Daisies, because they come in a ton of bright, sunny colors (I have orange/yellow ones in a vase next to me right now), and at $3.99 for 10 stems (thank you, Trader Joe's), they're an easy way to brighten up my apartment with a bit of nature. For the last 4 years, no matter where I've lived, I have had a tall, clear, glass vase full of them in my apartment almost every single day of the year!