Today, a Rose Isn’t Just a Rose

Nothing says love more than a man who will argue with another guy over the last red rose in the cooler. Or a man who, as the flower shop closes, will shove cash through the gate begging to be sold a dozen.

These are the kinds of things men do on Valentine’s Day to avoid the couch that night. Just ask Denny Full, who is to Feb. 14 what Santa Claus is to Dec. 25. A busy man catering to the gift-giving needs of a desperate-to-please constituency.

“This is a very emotional holiday,” said Full, who owns a Conroy’s flower shop in Costa Mesa, where about 37,500 roses from South America will fly out the door during the rush.

For Full and his crew of 27, today is the culmination of a week’s worth of 14-hour days that leaves everyone with tired legs, sore hands and tested nerves.

“It’s extremely busy. Everybody wants everything, needs everything, and they all want it there at a certain time,” said Ashley Morlan, who on Thursday took orders over a phone that rarely stopped ringing. “It gets wild.”

A sign by the cash register warned not to ask for a specific delivery time.

Today, the shop will make some 600 deliveries to homes and offices. More than 1,000 customers will walk in. By evening, a line will stretch out the door and down Harbor Boulevard.

The majority are men who will opt for a dozen red roses. It’s the gold standard in Valentine’s giving, nurtured over the years by marketing folks who would sell you a dozen long-stemmed stalks of wheat if they could.

“Will it be like that?” Agustin Sesmas asks a clerk, pointing to a vase full of voluptuous red beauties garnished in green, the kind of arrangement he is thinking of having delivered to his girlfriend today.

Yes, he is assured, just like that. A credit card is unholstered.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Sesmas said about flower buying. “I just know that she likes roses. You can’t go wrong with that.”

For those seeking to make a statement, there are options. A sign spells them out. White roses signify innocence, purity and secrecy. Yellow is for joy and friendship. Lavender telegraphs love at first sight. Coral equates desire.

“They just say, ‘You do it and I’ll watch,’ ” Morlan said, describing men who are unsure what to buy. “They don’t have the confidence in themselves to pick the right thing. They figure that because we’re girls, we can pick out something we’d like and their wife or girlfriend will like it too.”

Kevin Jones understands this.

“It’s kind of like lingerie shopping,” said Jones, 27, who bought his wife a dozen red roses. “We don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jones has never forgotten Valentine’s Day. But he has procrastinated and been forced to buy them from a street hawker.

This year, he was a day early.

All it took was a few minutes and $80, and Jones walked out of Conroy’s with an order for a dozen red roses, secure in knowing that he had performed his duty and performed it well.

“Got out without any bruises,” he said.