Credit for our Thanksgiving feasts —and today’s leftovers — is due in no small part to the Connecticut farmers who produced the corn, potatoes and turkey, among other commodities. But those weren’t Connecticut farmers’ biggest money makers last year. Those would be flowers.

Of Connecticut’s estimated $686 million in agricultural sales in 2022, 24.4% came from floriculture, according to sales and survey data compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Turkey sales made up 2.4% of all sales in Connecticut, and a variety of other crops made up 38.4%. The specific crops in the miscellaneous category are not disclosed by the USDA to protect the privacy of farmers’ individual operations.

And compared to the rest of the country, Connecticut’s share of flower sales is the second-highest, right after Alaska, where flower sales accounted for 29% of the industry.

And while Connecticut's and Alaska’s flower sales made up a large portion of their state’s totals, at the national level, they only contributed 2.5% and 0.2%, respectively.

In contrast, the state with the most flower sales was Florida, which made up 17.5% of all national flower sales but only 13.6% in its state's agricultural industry. California's floriculture industry made up 14.3% nationally, but only 1.7% of its state farm sales.

So while the floriculture industry in Connecticut contributes just a fraction nationally, at the state level, it's a powerhouse.

And since 2018, the earliest year for which there is data for Connecticut, floriculture has made up no less than a fifth of all sales, with a high of 27.3% in 2021 and a low of 22.6% in 2018.

“Because its business activities are so diverse and widespread, the green industry is often underestimated in the public eye as a driver of the economy. Particularly in a northeastern, relatively urban state, such as Connecticut, the contributions of the green industry are often overlooked,” reads a report released three years ago by the University of Connecticut.

In the report, UConn's College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources' Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy found that in 2017, 51% of all agricultural gross sales were made up of nursery, greenhouse, floriculture and sod.