The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

Stamp of approval: A guide to gesneriads on stamps

By Larry Skog and John L. Clark

Stamp-collecting, or philately, is a time-honored hobby that has been indulged in by kings, presidents, and every-day folk since postage stamps first came into use in the 1840s. While stamp collectors or philatelists fill their collections with stamps from many countries or concentrate on a single region, others devote their time collecting special topics such as stamps showing ships, military, cats, or dogs. Some specialize in postage stamps with plants, of which thousands exist from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, thus a never-ending source of opportunity.

We recently published a 3-part series about gesneriads (Gesneriaceae) on postage stamps in Gesneriads, the quarterly journal of The Gesneriad Society. The series covers 73 stamps from 50 countries showing 21 genera and 35 species, hybrids, and cultivars. The first part dealt with New World gesneriads [in Gesneriads 71(2): 5-28. 2021]; the second part has Asian and Western Pacific gesneriads [Gesneriads 71(3): 12-30. 2021]; and the third part featured European and Africa gesneriads [Gesneriads 72(1): 4-26. 2022]. The Botany and Horticulture Library at the National Museum of Natural History carries the journal Gesneriads, as do many local, herbaria, and university libraries.

In the articles, each stamp is shown in color, from Skog’s collection of plant stamps (or found and purchased on-line from eBay or other sources). Each stamp image is accompanied by a photo of a wild or cultivated plant of the same species or cultivar from Clark’s vast photo collection, or photos from other gesneriad growers or field collectors.

The goal of the project was to identify images of all postage stamps that feature Gesneriaceae by consulting horticultural and taxonomic literature as well as providing accurately identified photographs of the same species or cultivars from natural or horticultural populations. The authors had much help from gesneriad growers and other specialists, with more than 60 people contributing identifications of the plants on the stamps, providing images of the living plants (many were Clark’s own field photos), and information about the natural history of the species.

Seventy-three stamp images may seem like a lot of stamps showing plants from a single family. Other plant families, however, have hundreds, if not thousands of stamps from dozens of countries. Orchidaceae is the most popular family on postage stamps. Rosaceae is likely the second most popular family showing roses or fruits (apples, pears, strawberries, etc.). The grass family, Poaceae, is represented by a large number of stamp images, particularly showing wheat or corn. The palm family, Arecaceae, is featured on many stamps from tropical and Pacific Island countries, with the coconut palm as the main subject or in the background.

The most popular genus of Gesneriaceae illustrated on postage stamps with numerous cultivars and hybrids is Streptocarpus, which is featured on 29 stamps from 22 countries from Burundi to Yugoslavia. The most popular species is Streptocarpus ionanthus (formerly known as Saintpaulia ionantha), the African violet, featured on 23 stamps, including a United States stamp issued in 1993 that commemorated the original discovery and publication of the species.

The rarest gesneriad on a postage stamp is Boea urvillei. This species is known only from two specimens housed at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Leiden, Netherlands) collected on the remote Waigeo Island off the coast of West Papua of Indonesia. A 1955 collection of B. urvillei by Pieter van Royen served as the basis for a drawing by an artist at Leiden, and from the drawing an image was reproduced on the stamp from the former Netherlands New Guinea.

New Zealand’s only gesneriad, Rhabdothamnus solandri, is featured on a stamp honoring Daniel Carl Solander (1733-1782) who collected the species as the resident botanist on Captain Cook’s first voyage to the South Pacific. All of the stamp-imaged plants have stories including Jancaea heldriechii growing only on Mt. Olympus in Greece, to Cyrtandra platyphylla growing on the Big Island in Hawai’i, and even a bogus stamp from a non-existent country featuring Sinningia cooperi. 

The project linked several stamp images to lithographs, mainly from the 19^th century. While tracking down an image from the Dibang Valley in India for example, it was discovered that a recent publication of a new species (Henckelia siangensis) described a previously published species (H. dibangensis) – the same species that was incorrectly identified on the postage stamp. Thus there are three names for two species, and the incorrect identification on the postage stamp facilitated the discovery that the same species was independently published. The discovery also allowed us to better understand that Henckelia mishmiensis (named after Mishmi or Deng people of Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh) is more common than what is represented in herbaria. There are even recent observations of this poorly documented species in iNaturalist! The principle of priority decides which name is accepted, and in this case the recent name (H. siangensis) should be considered a synonym.