Then perhaps the Venetian trader and explorer Marco Polo (1254-1324) had brought back the art crafts, the Italians began making artificial flowers. Soon the French began to develop the silk flowers too. By the 14th century, French silk flowers were the top of the Old World. The French continued to improve the quality of both fabrics and the fabric flowers.

By late 18th century, many French silk flowers were exported to England. Eventually, by the beginning of 19th century, English immigrants had taken the silk flowers with them to the New World.

In the United States, there was a company called The Parisian Flower company which had offices in both USA and France, started to supply silk wedding flowers and other silk flowers to dressmakers and room decorators. By 1920, florists who used to sell natural flowers only began to use silk flowers in their vases and containers when it was not the season for some natural flowers or when some natural flowers were in short supply.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the wreaths and decoration ornaments using fake artificial fruits & vegetables in the Italian della Robbia style became popular. In 1940s, the artificial flowers made of Celluloid from Japan were once a fashion. But due to these kinds of foux flowers are highly flammable, they were soon banned from importation after a few disastrous fires.

After that, artificial flower makers kept searching new materials for making the silk flowers. Eventually by 1970s, silk flowers made of plastic at lower price from Taiwan began to appear in the US floral markets.

Nowadays in the year of 2007, we all have known that most of the silk flowers, silk plants and silk trees have been imported from China, Thailand and other countries due to the labor cost consideration. Also due to a lot of modern new materials such as polyester, latex, polyresin have been developed, the new generation of silk flowers, silk plants and silk trees could look very realistic that people sometimes mistake them as real ones.