The incoming head of the Floral Council of the Produce Marketing Association sees the 30-member group’s main task in the year ahead as developing a workable program that can be carried out by volunteers while the council builds upon its success at the PMA Fresh Summit and attracts the financial support to carry out the program.

After experimenting with third-party vendors in the flower-delivery business, Amazon.com appears interested in expanding into that area itself. A 17-year industry veteran said the move “only once again highlights how important it is for supermarket floral operations to develop and promote their own online floral selling programs.”

Amazon, an online retail giant and Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, quietly entered the rapidly expanding online floral market in early August with its own line of fresh-cut flower bouquets, called the Amazon Curated Flower Collection.

Sales of Hawaii’s floriculture and nursery products declined for the fifth year in a row, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The annual review for 2012 found overall floriculture sales of $69.1 million dropped by one percent from 2011. Sales have dropped since a record high of $108.7 million in the pre-recession year of 2007.

FloralHolland is in Dutch with a group of irate flower and plant traders from The Netherlands. The group has filed a lawsuit against FloraHolland, according to the Dutch wholesale florist association VGB. Their demand is that the pending increase in the auction clock rates for 2014, which the flower auction set without the seemingly required agreement from its trader clients, be struck down.

The 58-member committee developing voluntary American standards for sustainable agricultural products, including cut flowers and potted plants, will issue a draft version of the standards for public comment sometime this fall, according to Michael Arny, president of Leonardo Academy of Madison, WI. The academy is a nonprofit shepherding the project through the development process prescribed by the American National Standards Institute.

Austria has All Souls’ Day (Allerseelen), Belgians give flowers to sick people on the Day of the Ill People (Ziekendag), the Czech Republic celebrates Nameday Adam and Eve (Naamdag Adam en Eva), the Danes honor Crown Princess Mary (Verjaardag Kroomprinses Mary), the Finns dance the night away on Walpurgis Night (a spring festival with bonfires), the French have Mardi Gras (a la New Orleans), and the Germans have Thank You Day (Danke Shoen Tag).