How do I love thee? Count the Valentine events in area

It wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day in the Bay Area without a little rabbit stew and orchid sex. Also puppy love.

All of that, and more, are on the agenda as lovebirds get together for the annual rose and chocolate-infused mating rite known as Valentine’s Day.

This year, the roses are sharing the stage. In Richmond, they’re sharing it with a night of pillaging, and eating rabbit stew with your fingers.

There wasn’t to be any real pillaging this weekend at the Valkyriethemed “Very Viking Valentine’s,” said Gregory Zobel, owner of the Armistice brewery in Richmond, but there was to be real rabbit stew, real Viking costumes, and real plastic swords for having fake sword fights. All that cost $85 per person.

“Doing war cries and eating with your hands is probably not for everyone on Valentine’s Day,” said Zobel, who added that no one fell in love at last year’s Viking Valentine’s Day. But there’s always hope and second chances when it comes to love, which is why it was held on Friday and will be again on Saturday. There is likely to be a lot of drinking, leading to judgment as hazy as the brewery’s trademark hazy IPA. But more than hazy judgment is required for falling in love, experts say.

Chocolate, an aphrodisiac on Valentine’s Day as well as the 364 other days of year, is something to study in earnest at the Exploratorium science museum on the Embarcadero.

For $20, lovers and other scientists can attend a scientific lecture on the genetic engineering of cocoa beans, followed by a lecture on the history of cocoa beans in the Americas, followed by an art workshop in which museum-goers can paint pictures — presumably brown ones — using molten chocolate.

“We’re always looking for interesting connections across the genres,” said Exploratorium spokeswoman Avi Martin.

BART, which has been called many things besides lovey-dovey, is holding a Valentine’s contest, asking patrons to explain in a one-page essay what makes BART such a romantic way to get around on Valentine’s Day. The winners get overnight stays in San Francisco, Berkeley and Walnut Creek. Transportation to those cities by BART is not included in the prize, which means that the folks at BART might know a thing or two about BART’s romantic qualities.

Sex being a big deal on Valentine’s Day, regardless of species, the Conservatory of Flowers experts will be holding a special session to explain to visitors how orchids do it.

“Roaming docents will go into exuberant detail on plant reproduction, with a focus on the sex life of orchids,” the conservatory said in an announcement about the event, called Aphrodisiacs of the Tropics. They’ll also talk about vanilla, cinnamon, hibiscus flowers, coconuts and other organisms that, for millions of years, have known how to reproduce without human assistance.

The giant greenhouse on Kennedy Drive, already a steamy place, is bound to get steamier.

Admission is $35, which is four times the normal price of a ticket to the conservatory, but Valentine’s Day has never been about saving money. Included are one drink and some chocolate.

Orchids aren’t the only pricey things with petals. At $100 or so per dozen, red roses aren’t cheap, either — and the rules for getting them delivered on Valentine’s Day are different.

At Elizabeth’s Flowers in Hayes Valley, you don’t get to choose what time of day your sweetie gets the flowers. Most days you do. But on Feb. 14, the florist said, business is so frantic that “we cannot accommodate requests for specific delivery times.”

A dozen roses cost $125 and two dozen roses cost $200. That means the second dozen costs only $75, but you cannot order the second dozen without the first dozen, even though the flowers may not know the difference.

Like other commodities, red roses are subject to supply and demand. On Valentine’s Day, the demand can make a wholesale red rose — many of them imported from South America — double in price. A couple of bucks or more per stem is typical. Florists refer to a red rose or any other flower as a “stem,” which sounds as romantic as a ride on BART to Walnut Creek.

Also for $200, you can order a singing “telegram.” Jeff Silverman, proprietor of Rock Star Singing Telegrams of San Francisco, will dispatch a guitar-toting musician throughout the Bay Area to deliver a 5- to 10-minute performance of any popular rock tune, which most often turns out to be “Brown-Eyed Girl.” For Valentine’s Day, his busiest of the year, he’s already booked 10 singing telegrams.

Western Union stopped sending written telegrams in 2006. A musical performance isn’t really a telegram, Silverman acknowledged, although if a customer really insists on a written message, he’s willing to scribble something on a piece of paper and deliver it after the performance, no extra charge.

“Millennials have no idea what a telegram is,” Silverman said. “That’s something of an obstacle for our business.”