To supplement the series of postage stamps Unique Exhibits of the Latvian Museum of Natural History, Latvijas Pasts has released a new stamp Herbarium of the 19th Century. The first day cancellation of the stamp is to take place in the Latvian Museum of Natural History, 4 Krišjāņa Barona Street, Riga, from 10 AM to 5 PM on the 17th of February 2017. A special presentation of the stamp, which is scheduled to start at 11 AM, will see the participation of representatives of Latvijas Pasts and the Latvian Museum of Natural History.
The new stamp depicts the Dog Rose (Rosa canina L.), an exhibit from the Museum’s Botany Collection. The print run of the stamp is 200,000 copies, and its face value is €1.42, making it suitable for sending a registered Class A letter within Latvia. The release of the stamp is accompanied by the issue of a special cover with a print run of 1,500 copies. The stamp and the cover have been designed by the artist Ģirts Grīva.
The holdings of the Latvian Museum of Natural History include vast holdings of botanical materials, which amount to a total of 26,000 units and are grouped into 18 collections. The Dog Rose depicted on the stamp is an exhibit from the oldest Botany Collection, which was plucked by the first Latvian botanist Jānis Ilsters at the end of the 19th century. This herbarium collection consists of 139 herbarium sheets.
This is the third stamp released in the series Unique Exhibits of the Latvian Museum of Natural History. The first stamp was issued in 2015 and it was dedicated to the unique specimen in the Palaeontology Collection of the Museum – the placoderm fish. In 2016 the series was supplemented by the stamp Aberrant Birds, which was ranked third in the contest for the most beautiful Latvijas Pasts stamp of 2016.
