With Valentine's Day around the corner, it is time to look at a few flowers that are grown for cutting.

I recently interviewed Amy Stewart, author of "Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers" (Algonquin Books, $23.95). Stewart has traveled the world looking at how and where the flowers in your holiday bouquets might come from, giving her a keen insight into the cut-flower industry.

Stewart is an avid gardener in Eureka, Calif., where she enjoys growing different kinds of plants. "I have a chilly Pacific Northwest climate, and I can garden almost all year round. I grow mostly flowers and some vegetables and perennial herbs," she said.

When asked what prompted a gardener to start traveling the world and writing about the international flower industry, she responded, "I am a gardener, but I think the commercially grown flowers are different than the ones in my garden.

"I look at the little pompon chrysanthemums that I see in florist shows and I think, 'You would never grow those in your garden.' The same is true of gerbera daisies. They are not a real great garden flower, but they are a very popular florist flower. The garden flowers and the florist flowers really come from two different worlds."

When asked about Valentine's Day, Stewart said the holiday has been celebrated in one form or another for hundreds of years, but flowers are a recent addition to the celebration.

"People gave cards and other gifts, but flowers did not become part of the holiday until after the turn of the last century. We had to wait until we had the greenhouse technology. Once we had the right technology, the flowers could be grown out of season," she said.

To get some idea about the international flower business, let's look at some statistics:

• The cut flower industry produces more than 40 billion dollars worth of flowers each year.

• Americans spend some $6.2 billion on cut flowers and purchase about 4 billion stems per year. That amounts to 10 million cut flowers per day.

Modern air transport has completely changed world flower production. Each day, the famous Dutch flower auction at Aalsmeer handles 19 million flowers. In the two weeks before Valentine's Day, 12 million to 15 million stems of flowers will arrive each day at Miami International Airport from Latin American flower farms.