Chinese New Year flowers @ Eagle Warehouse Lobby, Bkln

Cremola mums, Mandarin oranges, Camellia and Forsythia branches in a Chinese Lantern-style ceramic vase

Not your typical Chinese New Year flower arrangement, what without the usual riot of red and gold all over, right? But it does feature bright yellow (surrogate for gold=wealth)
and lots of oranges. Why oranges? Because they're trad-
itional symbols of fertility (containing lots of seeds), as well as the fact that the Chinese word for orange, "jweh dz", is a homonym for "bearing sons"---something so, so terribly valued in old China's patriarchal culture .
Funny that such traditions continue to endure wherever Chinese New Year is celebrated (which is pretty much everywhere in the world because there are so many Chinese people ;-) ---all in spite of global concerns of overpopulation and strides in feminist equality.
Whatever. These oranges are sweet, aren't they?