For Skiploom, I'd seriously recommend using 3 bones for the entire flower hat thing. One for the base, one for the second ring of vertices out from the middle, and one last bone for the out ring of vertices.
This way you could use scaling and translations to move all 3 of the sections of the flower hat without having to translate each one separately.
The only reason you would ever need that many bones for a symmetrical piece of mesh like that would be if you were going to make the flower hat move and sway and dance and have the petals move independently of each, which would be difficult keep to make look much than the 3 bone technique.
U git mah drift?