Hungarian Stamps

Magyar Posta presents two protected Hungarian flowers on its new postage stamps with no monetary value marked. The cloth-of-gold crocus is shown on the DOMESTIC stamp and the squill on the DOMESTIC PRIORITY stamp. The unusual feature about the issue is that the stamp depicting the cloth-of-gold crocus is also being released in a self-adhesive version.

The small cloth-of-gold crocus is just 5-10 cm high and is one of the earliest blooming wild flowers in the country. Four species occur wild in Hungary and all are protected. The north- western border of the places it occurs is in Hungary. (Source: www.paks.info.hu)
There are several species of squill, which are all protected. The species illustrated on the stamp is Scilla drunensis Speta, which likes a fresh, damp habitat, and flowers between the end of February and April. (Source: wwf.hu)

In ultra violet light a red guilloche pattern is visible on the gummed set of stamps and a green guilloche pattern on the edge of the self-adhesive stamp. This is the first time in the history of Hungarian stamp issuing that sheets of 50 self-adhesive stamps have been made. The stamps in the sheet in each field have been made using kiss-diecut wavy lines imitating perforation stopping at the corners. Security kiss-diecutting has been used on the stamps for the inscriptions DOMESTIC and HUNGARY. Perforation lines aid separation between the lines and columns within the sheet.

• (DOMESTIC) standard letter weight up to 30g + priority (after 2011-01-01 — current postal rate)