Latvijas Pasts in collaboration with the Latvian Fund for Nature has issued a new stamp and cover featuring a rare and highly endangered plant, water lobelia. This beautiful and ornamental plant is a symbol of the purity and biological youth of Latvia’s lakes.
The print run of the stamp Water Lobelia is 50,000 copies. Its face value is €1.20, which corresponds to the postage of letter-post items weighing up to 20 grams in Latvia. The release of the stamp is accompanied by the issue of a special cover with a print run of 800 copies. The stamp and the cover have been designed by the artist Edgars Folks.
Water lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna) is a 20 to 70 cm tall perennial aquatic plant with a dense leaf rosette and a long flower-bearing stem rooted in sandy or gravelly soil that raises an inflorescence of three to 12 white flowers above the water surface during flowering. This beautiful and ornamental plant blooms from mid-June to late July.
Lobelia is a symbol of the purity and biological youth of Latvia’s lakes. It is widespread in the clean and nutrient-poor lakes of the northern regions of Europe and North America. Nowadays, it is a rarity in Latvia and is a highly endangered plant species; therefore, it is included in Category 1 of the Latvian Red Data Book as particularly protected. In the first half of the 20th century, it was found in at least 50 lakes in Latvia, but today it has survived in no more than 29 lakes.
