the petals fall one by one hiding the fact that flowers don't tell secrets; and if they do– who would trust a flower's judgement?
it was like eeny, meeny, miny, moe or whatever; we knew what we wanted, even if we pretended we didn't. so we'd pick the one (whether it was the flower with the even petals, or the item we'd start with) that we knew would give us the favorable outcome. we just like humoring ourselves.