Daylilies from Canada…

 

 

Date of Issue : March 1, 2012

Two brilliant, colourful and exquisite daylilies (Hemerocallis) grace the seventh issue in Canada Post’s beloved flower series.

 

Daylilies

The Daylily (Hemerocallis) was long placed in the Lily family (Liliaceae), but is now considered to belong in the plant family Hemerocallidaceae. This term, from the Greek words meaning “beauty” and “day,” alludes to the fact that each flower lasts for just one day. Since there are many flower buds on each flower stalk and many stalks in each cluster, the overall flowering period is usually several weeks long. The flowers of most species open at sunrise and wither atsunset, often replaced by another on the same stalk the next day. Although not commonly used for arrangements, daylilies make good cut flowers, as new blossoms continue to open over several days.

Originally, daylilies could be found only in yellow, orange, and reddish-brown. Today, colours range from near-white, to yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, blue and more. While the roadside yellow or orange daylilies—known to hybridizers as Hemerocallis fulva (or Hemerocallis fulva Europa)—are forms of the cultivated types that ‘escaped’ and now grow wild, all modern daylilies have evolved through a complicated history of hybridization.

: Canada Post

Club News

Latest issue of Vadophil

Latest issue of Vadophil, Quarterly News Bulletin of Baroda Philatelic Society, edited by Prashant Pandya and Timir R Shah is available online.Special feature of this issue are Report on Gujpex 2011, Articles, & Auction.

View : Vadophil # 128-129 (Oct. 2011 / Jan 2012)

 

Search continues for secret stamp honoring John Glenn's historic spaceflight 

 

The 1962 4-cent "Project Mercury" stamp marked the first time that the U.S. issued a previously unannounced commemorative stamp at the same time as the event it was issued to honor: John Glenn’s historic Friendship 7 spaceflight.

 

4-cent 'Project Mercury' postage stamp sold in 1962 was a surprise

2/20/2012 10:43:38 AM ET

Fifty years ago today (Feb. 20), John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, relied on ground stations located across the planet to communicate with his control team. But after his Mercury spacecraft, Friendship 7, safely splashed down, it was another type of station that took over tracking his historic mission: U.S. post offices.

For the first and only time in the country's postal history, the United States Post Office Department — since 1971, the U.S. Postal Service — surprised the public with the release of a secret stamp celebrating Glenn's successful mission. The 4-cent "Project Mercury" postage stamp was revealed and immediately put on sale in 305 post offices within an hour of Glenn's triumphant return to Earth at 2:43 p.m. EST (1943 GMT) on Feb. 20, 1962.

Half a century later, collectors are still searching for those first-day-of-issue stamps.

"The U.S. Post Office Department signaled the first orbital flight of a United States astronaut today with the issuance of a commemorative stamp, placed on sale throughout the country on the exact hour Astronaut John Glenn's historic flight was officially completed," the department stated. "It is the first time in history that a previously unannounced commemorative stamp was issued simultaneously with the event it memorializes."

As news of the stamp spread over radio and television, the public began lining up at their closest post offices that had stock of the now no longer secret issue. Collectors in particular drove many miles to have their blank envelopes postmarked with the surprise stamp, creating a collectible for that first day's release and the historic space flight it honored.

Without a way to coordinate nationwide, collectors couldn't know however if such "first day covers" existed for all 305 stations. To this day, 50 years later, as many as 20 cities are still missing examples.  Read More…

: Hemant Kulkarni, Milwaukee USA

Golden Katar Philatelic Exhibition – 2012

 

: Dr Paresh Upadhyaya