I\u2019ve written two pieces at FiveThirtyEight that may be of interest to those of you celebrating Valentine\u2019s Day this weekend. \u00a0First up:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nIf you bought your roses on Feb. 10 and took good care of them,\u00a0you might still have a bouquet to bestow on Feb. 14. (But you\u2019d need a good explanation for why they wilted a day or two later.)<\/p>\n
You could eke a little more life out of the roses by keeping them in something other than tap water.\u00a0In a 2005 paper<\/a>\u00a0in the International Journal Of Agriculture & Biology, Shahid Javed Butt of the Hill Fruits Research Station found that placing roses in a sucrose solution (25 grams of sugar per liter of water) extended their life for 2.5 days compared to roses in distilled water. Placing them in a silver nitrate solution (150 ppm) for 24 hours did even better, giving them an extra 3.7 days before wilting, compared to untreated flowers. That might be enough to get you through Valentine\u2019s Day and a little while after.\u00a0Roses will come to fear your botany powers.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And also:<\/p>\n
Your Valentine Is More Interested In Dinner And A Card Than Anything Else<\/a><\/h3>\n
\nI was once so worried about what kind of Valentine\u2019s Day gift a girl should give a boy that I persuaded a florist to wrap a packet of beef jerky next to a single rose. That went over pretty well, but I figure that can\u2019t be the usual approach, or the florist wouldn\u2019t have been so flabbergasted. So to see what Valentine\u2019s gift people are expecting (or if they\u2019re even expecting a gift) these days, I commissioned a\u00a0SurveyMonkey Audience<\/a>\u00a0poll of 567 men and women in heterosexual relationships,1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0to see how they want their partners to express their love.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n