Artificial flowers have been around for about 3000 years.
They were first mentioned in the Book of Kings, part of the Old Testament. The Queen of Sheba used to test Solomon with various riddles to see if he was worthy of her. One of the riddles was to distinguish which of 12 lillies were real and which were artificial. Solomon was clever enough to observe how a bee only settled on the real flowers, ignoring the artificial ones.
Read more in German – History of flower making
English version available soon.