George is a Masai giraffe (also known as a Kilimanjaro giraffe — the tallest land mammal on earth) and he is a well-known fixture at Nini Farm, a rose farm near Lake Naivasha in Kenya, Africa, about 55 miles northwest of Nairobi.

“A rose is a rose is a rose” was written in a poem by Gertrude Stein in 1913 and expresses the idea that simply using the name of a thing evokes its associated emotions and imagery.

So what are consumers imagining when it comes to roses, and how do we get their full attention with this flower?

When a consumer thinks about buying flowers, the first thing that usually pops into their head are roses — the queen of all flowers. Roses are the blooms that make our Valentine holidays so profitable and roses are also responsible for making our everyday floral business thrive.

How do we promote the flower that consumers believe we hike up the prices on for Valentine’s Day, just because we can? We should provide our customers with quality roses and value whenever the opportunity arises, especially during the flush periods (the return crop that follows a holiday harvest).

Roses continue to be the number one flower that American consumers demand and roses are also the top imported fresh-cut flower into the United States.

Last year there were 5.109 billion stems of flowers that came into the United States and at least 38 percent of those stems were roses. They can arrive in either straight boxes of roses, in rose bouquets, or in mixed bouquets, and there were over 1.95 billion stems that arrived in 2013 in straight rose boxes or rose bouquets, but roses that arrive in mixed bouquets are not accounted for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Today, over 1.6 billion stems of roses are imported into the United States annually. That’s in stark contrast to our country’s domestic production at just over 30 million stems in 2013.

More than 200 exhibitors are expected at the Agriflor show Oct. 1-4 at the CEMEXPO Exhibition Center in Quito, Ecuador, according to a news release from the organizer, HPP Exhibitions in Amsterdam.

The business-to-business trade-only show is one of the larger flower grower events in the world and will feature quality competitions among breeders and growers, farm tours and fair celebrations. This year marks the 15th edition of the show, which is held biennially.

The exhibitors’ list, updated July 1, totaled 195 firms, including a handful from the United States.