The Romanian stamp, an efficient means of education and eloquent messenger of various fields and campaigns, invites you to discover the benefits of nature, through our new philatelic project entitled Berries.
Romfilatelia will introduce the Forest Fruit issue on Friday, September 29, 2017, available in Romfilatelia stores in Bucharest, Bacau, Brasov, Cluj-Napoca, Iasi, Timisoara, as well as in our online store: https://romfilatelia.ro/store/.
Forest fruits, the ones that colour the forest clearings and trees every summer, have been consumed by people before the emergence of agriculture and are still a source of food for many animal species.
Considered to be among the healthiest foods, rich in antioxidants, they have many beneficial properties for the body, helping to fortify immunity and combat certain conditions. The color of these fruits is an indication of the benefits that their consumption brings to the body.
The new series of postage stamps illustrates the woodland strawberry, common sea buckthorn, dog rose and common hawthorn, natural resources for a healthy lifestyle.
The stamp with a face value of Lei 2.20 illustrates common sea buckthorn (Hippophaë rhamnoides), a shrub that can grow up to 5-6 m high, with branches that have many long spikes, very sharp, and the leaves are narrow, green-silver. The flowers, brownish-yellow, are small and appear in March-April.
Fruits are ovoid or globular, 5-10 mm long and 4-8 mm wide. They are grouped together, green in the beginning and yellow-orange when they reach full maturity. They can be harvested immediately after ripening until the first frost.
Known also as the white sea buckthorn, because of its spines, it is spread in the hilly regions of Wallachia and Moldavia, where it grows abundantly along rivers and springs, as well as on mountain slopes.
Crataegus monogyna, illustrated on the stamp with a face value of Lei 3.50, is commonly known as the single-seeded hawthorn or common hawthorn and can be found in the plains, hills and mountains, being quite unpretentious.
It is a spiny shrub with lobed leaves and finely serrated edges. Flowers have 5 white or pink petals and are reunited in bouquets that grow red-orange fleshy fruit.
The common hawthorn grows on the lower plains, where the fruits reach maturity in the early days of September, up to the sub-mountainous areas where they ripen later due to climatic conditions. The mature fruits are red.
For therapeutic purposes, the on uses the common hawthorn’s flowers, leaves and fruits. They contain flavonoids, vitamins B and C, volatile oils and tannins.
Rosa canina, the illustration of the stamp with the face value of Lei 8, is a shrub whose healing properties have been known since antiquity.
The popular name of this flower is dog rose.
The dog rose is a perennial plant, growing on the plains but also in hilly areas, and which blooms in the first part of April. The pink flowers turn into small, red fruits towards the end of September. Usually the rose has pale pink flowers, but there are also subspecies with white or dark pink flowers. The flowers themselves measure between 4 and 6 centimeters in diameter and have 5 petals.
What we refer to as the fruit are actually pseudo-fruit, the real fruits being the ones inside, called “seeds”.
The plant is high in certain antioxidants. The fruit is noted for its high level of vitamin C, and is used to make syrup, tea, and marmalade.
On the stamp with the face value of Lei 15 is represented Fragaria vesca, with the common names of wild strawberry, woodland strawberry, Alpine strawberry, Carpathian Strawberry, European strawberry is a perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Fragaria, the Rosaceae family, which can reach a height of 30 cm. The fruits are edible, small and conical in shape, white or red, fleshy with a sweet and sour taste. The leaves are trifoliate, green, odorless and astringent.
It blooms in the spring, and in the next 25-30 days the fruits can be harvested.
The postage stamp issue is completed by a first day cover and a set of 4 maxi-cards, and as page composition, a sheet of 28 stamps with tête-bêche, and a minisheet of 5 stamps and a label have been used.
Romfilatelia thanks the “Dimitrie Brândza” Botanical Garden of the University of Bucharest, the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy and the photographer Octavian Chende for the support given to this postage stamps issue.
For further information, please contact the Public Relation Office:
Tel: 021 / 337 24 42
anamaria.anton@romfilatelia.ro