Every May, millions of flowers make their way to mums across the US for Mother's Day, and the majority come from one nation.

So, where do these flowers come from?

That would be Colombia, which exports more than $2bn worth of cut flowers each year, making it the second-largest flower producer in the world after the Netherlands, and the largest single supplier to the United States. Nearly 80% of Colombia's flowers (or $1.62bn) end up in the US, so if you're Stateside, chances are that the stems in your Mother's Day bouquets originated in this South American country.

A 2024 article in the American Journal of Transportation noted that in just 21 days, more than 400 LATAM Airlines flights carrying 24,000 tonnes of flowers (roughly 552 million flower stems), took off from Colombia and neighbouring Ecuador. But thanks to rising inflation and US President Donald Trump issuing a 10% baseline tariff on most all imported goods from Colombia, many experts say that Mother's Day bouquets are likely to be more expensive in the US this year.

"Flowers are not something we can buy in advance and hold on to, they have to be cut fresh," shopping expert Trae Bodge recently told The Today Show. "Consumers are really going to feel that pinch when they're buying flowers [this year]."

Prior to the 1960s, most American bouquet-bound flowers were cut fresh in California, but they were expensive. Colombia's modern floral export industry traces its roots back to the Cold War. Then in 1961, US President John F Kennedy created the $100bn Alliance for Progress initiative, which aimed to combat the threat of communism by enhancing economic cooperation between the US and Latin America. Colombia became a key focus of the administration, and one of the programme's first tasks was to help Colombia develop its agricultural industry.

Kennedy even visited Colombia's capital, Bogotá, in 1961, when nearly one-third of the city's 1.5 million people swarmed the streets to catch a glimpse of the US President and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It was the largest reception JFK had while in office, and today, one of the city's densest neighbourhoods is still named

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