Pressing the specimen 0

Florae  ·  Plates I — IV  ·  Autumn 2026

Florae Begin — €48/mo

No. 037October 2026Cayambe, Ecuador  0°02′ N

Florae

A flower a month,
from the edge of the map.

One extraordinary specimen, cut at dawn by the person who grew it — somewhere most maps leave blank — and at your door within forty-eight hours, with its botanical plate.

Subscribe — €48 / month This season’s plates

The atelier  ·  Lisbon, since 2019

We don’t send bouquets. We send one flower, and everything we know about it.

Florae began as a herbarium in a Lisbon attic: six hundred pressed sheets, a brass microscope, and a list of places the flower trade has never reached.

Today twenty-three growers on five continents cut a single stem for each member on the same morning. It travels in a cedar box with its plate, its coordinates, and a letter from the hands that grew it.

23
growers on five continents
48h
from the stem to your door
37
months sent, not one repeated

Plate ISettledMonth 37 · October

Rosa ‘Explorer’

The equator rose

Origin
Cayambe volcano, Ecuador0°02′ N  ·  2,850 m
Bloom season
All yearthe equator has no seasons, only altitude
Grown by
Rosa QuishpeFinca Yanahurco, third generation
Vase life
Fourteen daysrecut the stem every second morning

Twelve hours of vertical sun and cold Andean nights grow a head the size of a fist on a stem as straight as a rule. Forty-two petals, velvet to the touch, darkest where they are still furled.

Plate IISettledMonth 38 · November

Protea cynaroides

The king that waits for fire

Origin
Kogelberg, Western Cape34°19′ S  ·  400 m, in the fynbos
Bloom season
May — Octoberthe Cape winter, when the rain comes
Grown by
Thandi Mokoenaon land her grandmother burned and replanted
Keeps
For yearsdried on its own stem, out of water

What looks like one flower is two hundred, packed into a cone and guarded by pink, silver-haired bracts. In the wild it waits for fire to open its seed. It arrives fresh and dries without losing its shape.

Plate IIISettledMonth 39 · December

Phalaenopsis amabilis

The moon orchid

Origin
Crocker Range, Sabah, Borneo5°25′ N  ·  900 m, in the canopy
Bloom season
Spikes in springeach flower stays open up to a hundred days
Grown by
The Kinabalu Orchid Trustfrom nursery seed-stock, never the wild
Arrives
Rooted, in barkfrom the same forest it came from

An epiphyte: it lives in the treetops and never touches soil. Its lip is a landing strip painted for a single carpenter bee. Keep its roots in the light and it will flower for you again next spring.

Plate IVSettledMonth 40 · January

Morpho peleides

The one that isn’t a flower

Origin
Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica8°32′ N  ·  lowland rainforest
On the wing
All yearmost in the green season, May — November
Reared by
Co-operative of Rancho Quemadotwelve families, farm-bred stock
Arrives
Under museum glassafter a natural life of three weeks

Every twelfth month we send the visitor instead of the visited. There is no blue pigment in these wings: the scales are ridged like tiny shelves that fold light into colour. Watch the blue change as it breathes.

The archive  ·  137.5°

Next month is already in bud.

Our archive grows like a sunflower head. Every specimen we have sent is a floret in this spiral, set at the golden angle — the oldest at the rim, the months to come still green at the centre.

  1. Nov 2026Paphiopedilum rothschildianumGold of KinabaluSabah, BorneoIn bud
  2. Dec 2026Helleborus nigerThe Christmas roseJulian Alps, SloveniaIn bud
  3. Jan 2027Camellia japonica ‘Kuro-tsubaki’The black camelliaIzu Ōshima, JapanSetting buds
  4. Feb 2027Swainsona formosaSturt’s desert peaPilbara, AustraliaSeed sown
  5. Mar 2027Tulipa sprengeriThe last wild tulip of AmasyaAnatolia, TürkiyeBulbs resting
  6. Apr 2027Meconopsis betonicifoliaThe Himalayan blue poppyBumthang, BhutanUnder snow

36 florets sent  ·  none repeated  ·  one added on the 3rd of every month