Blooming colours
Be careful—if you leave these stamps lying around outside, you might just confuse the bees and butterflies. Canada Post’s new flower definitives feature bright, bold blossoms simply bursting out of the stamp frame with springtime colour. They’re so lifelike you’ll want to plant them in the garden, but take a closer look—the images are actually paintings created in exquisite colour and detail by the Quebec artist Pifko.
Definitives are the everyday stamps we use the most, so all the more reason to make them beautiful. Canada Post issued flower definitives for the first time last year, and because they were so popular they’ve returned for the 2006 postal rate change. This year, four stamps have been issued, each showing two views of a flower in a distinctive colour. Not all these flowers are native to Canada, but all grow wild in parts of the country.
The domestic rate (51¢) stamp shows the bright red bergamot blossom. The U.S. rate (89¢) features the brilliant yellow lady’s slipper, and the international rate ($1.49) the bold Himalayan blue poppy. New for 2006 is a definitive for oversized domestic mail ($1.05), showing the pretty pink fairy slipper. |
