/ 01
The rule
Ten stems, and the two big exceptions.
If you remember one line, remember this: in the florist trade a bunch is ten stems unless somebody says otherwise. Nearly everything else in this article is the otherwise.
The ten-stem bunch is the trade's default unit for most seasonal flowers: tulips, daffodils, ranunculus, anemones, snapdragons, stocks, cosmos, zinnias, scabiosa and their cousins all typically travel ten to the wrap. The exceptions run in both directions, and they follow money and physics. Big, heavy or premium heads drop to five: dahlias, peonies, hyacinths and the large-flowered celosias, where ten stems would be a bush, not a bunch. Commodity crops rise to twenty-five: roses and carnations, wrapped in the quantities the global trade has shipped them in for decades.
A bunch is ten stems unless stated otherwise. Premium heads go five. Commodity classics go twenty-five.
Why so unwritten? Because the convention started as a harvest-side habit, roughly what a picker's hand comfortably holds, and the trade never needed to formalise what everyone's hands already knew. That works fine until a new grower quotes a florist "£6 a bunch" and the two of them are silently imagining different numbers. Every awkward pricing conversation in this business starts exactly there.
/ 02
The reference
Crop by crop: the table.
The working reference, compiled from wholesale convention on both sides of the Atlantic and our own trading. Where practice genuinely varies, the notes say so.
| Crop | Stems | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Roses | 25 | The global wholesale standard; spray roses often 10 |
| Carnations | 25 | As roses; spray carnations often 10 |
| Tulips | 10 | Supermarket wraps of 5 or 7 exist; trade is 10 |
| Daffodils / narcissi | 10 | Market wraps of 10; posy-market 5s appear in spring |
| Ranunculus | 10 | Premium Italian butterfly types sometimes 5 |
| Anemones | 10 | Steady 10 in both markets |
| Sweet peas | 10–12 | The one crop sold as much by the wrap as the count |
| Stocks | 10 | Weight varies wildly by spike; count stays 10 |
| Snapdragons | 10 | 10 in both markets |
| Cosmos, zinnias, scabiosa | 10 | The default 10 for nearly all field annuals |
| Ammi, orlaya, nigella, cornflower | 10 | Fillers usually 10, sometimes sold by the wrap |
| Lisianthus | 10 | Occasionally 5 for double-flowered premium lines |
| Delphinium / larkspur | 10 | Tall spikes; 5s appear at the premium end |
| Lilies | 10 | 5s common for large oriental heads |
| Chrysanthemums (bloom) | 5–7 | US wholesale often 7; UK disbuds often 5 |
| Dahlias | 5 | Also commonly sold by the stem; say which |
| Peonies | 5 | 5 near-universal; 10 only at the cheap end |
| Hyacinths | 5 | Heavy heads; 5 the norm |
| Gypsophila / baby's breath | varies | By weight or grower bunch, roughly 8–13 stems |
| Foliage and greenery | varies | Grower's bunch: what the hand holds, sold by weight or wrap |
One necessary honesty note: there is no governing body for any of this, which is precisely why you could not find a straight answer. These are the conventions the trade actually runs on, not regulations. If a wholesaler tells you their bunch of something is different, theirs is the number that matters for that invoice.
/ 03
The other bunch
Florist bunch, grower's bunch, market bunch.
The same word means three different things depending on who is holding the flowers, and most confusion is these three trading places.
The florist bunch is the counted unit from the tables above: ten stems, or five, or twenty-five, consistent enough to price a wedding from. The grower's bunch is older and looser: the handful, bunched in the field at picking speed, and it is why foliage and filler quantities wobble. The market bunch is a retail product, not a unit: the mixed bunch on the stall or in the farm-gate bucket, priced by looks and generosity rather than by count.
UK-specific wrinkle worth knowing: at the wholesale markets, imported stems often arrive in wraps of 20, 25 or 50, while British-grown seasonal flowers mostly trade in the counted 10s and 5s above, and dahlias frequently sell by the single stem. In the US, the ten-stem grower bunch is near-universal for field crops, with roses and carnations at 25. Same grammar, slightly different accents.
/ 04
Using it
What this means when you sell.
For growers, the whole article compresses to one rule: never say "bunch" in a price without a number beside it.
Quote florists per stem or per stated bunch, "£8 for 10 stems", never per unqualified bunch. Match the wholesale counts in the table when you sell into the trade, because a florist recipe-costs a wedding assuming them: a "bunch" of your dahlias that holds seven stems when she planned on five is a gift, and when it holds three it is a problem. And keep your own counts honest in the field, because stems, not bunches, are the unit your profit maths runs on: a bunch is a packaging decision, but the bed earned its keep stem by stem.
That last habit is the one we built BloomOS around: you log cuts by the stem as you pick, bunch however the order needs, and the per-bed numbers stay true underneath. If you are still pricing on paper, the stems-needed maths is also built into our free crop planning spreadsheet. No email address, just take it.
From the field
Count stems in the field. Bunch them however you like.
BloomOS logs every cut by the stem, works offline in the field, and turns the season's picking into per-bed profit numbers. Free to start, built by a flower farmer, and recruiting a small founding cohort now.