If you want to stop and smell the roses, you might not think to go to the Fort Worth Stock Show Rodeo, but did you know that, in addition to the livestock and riding competitions, there’s a Floriculture Contest? “I love flowers,” Cameryn Mead of Godley FFA said. “For a very long time I t ried to find my hobby, and when floriculture was handed to me, I realized how much I liked it.” Mead was among the 4-H and FFA competitors in the Fort Worth Stock Show Rodeo’s Floriculture Contest. “The Fort Worth Stock Show is all-encompassing,” FWSSR Department Superintendent for Floriculture Dr. CyLynn Braswell said. “It goes well beyond cattle and swine, what we’re traditionally seeing when we think of rodeo and animals.” Students go from room to room at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden BRIT center for different classes in the competition. They have to identify 60 plants by their official and common names. They also judge and rank plants, floral arrangements, and stems, deciding what to keep and what to cull. “I looked at Number 4, the smallest one, I just put it at the bottom immediately,” Belon Outwama of North Central Texas Academy FFA said. “I looked at Number 3, it’s hydrangea. It’s really big, but it’s like really damaged, so I was ok, that’s gotta be second to last.” It might be the quietest FWSSR competition, and one of the few where you won’t see boots or cowboy hats. The floriculture programs for 4-H and FFA are career development programs, meant to be a gateway for a career in agriculture. “We want them to experience what it is to have that knowledge and skills, that content vocabulary, and really understand how they can apply that to real life,” Braswell said. “And maybe it opens a career opportunity that they’ve never heard of.” ...read more read less