Nowadays, many look at it as a bunch of partiers in silly shirts and straw hats wearing gaudy paper flower leis and drinking overly sweet, superfluity rum drinks while trying not to burn down the backyard with torch fuel being spilled on the grill.

FORBES: Tiki Times

We tip our hat to Jennifer Garner for starting this trend when she named her firstborn sweet, sassy Violet (Latin, purple flower).

CNN: The top baby names of 2013

But in this test, each identical fake flower, regardless of its surface structure, contained a sweet reward of sucrose.

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Into the sweet potato she spliced a gene from the pyrethrum, a white flower whose ingredients are fatal to insects and the feathery mottle virus.

FORBES: Millions Served

Into the sweet potato she has spliced in a gene from the pyrethrum, a white flower whose ingredients are fatal to insects and the feathery mottle virus.

FORBES: Millions Served