Michigan Orlaya

Orlaya, often sold as white lace flower, opens flat, snow-white umbels ringed by large outer petals that frame a fine center of tiny florets. Its ferny green foliage is nearly as pretty as the bloom itself. Floral designers reach for it as an airy filler that knits a bouquet together and lends a loose, garden-gathered lightness, all without ever crowding the focal flowers.

The garden species is Orlaya grandiflora, a cool-season annual in the carrot family that is native to the meadows and hillsides of Mediterranean Europe, not to Michigan. You will not find it growing wild along our roadsides the way its rangier relative Queen Anne’s lace does, so our member farmers sow it deliberately and cut it through the milder first half of a Michigan summer, roughly June into August, before real heat sends it to seed.

Those fine, hollow stems bruise and wilt quickly in a shipping box, which is why trucked-in lace so often arrives limp. Cut fresh by our Michigan farmers and conditioned the same day, our Orlaya keeps the springy stems and crisp white heads that make it such a joy to arrange with. Reserve a DIY bucket for your own bouquets, ask us to tuck a few stems into a mixed bucket, or let our floral designers weave it through your wedding work.