Native orchids - Germany / German Democratic Republic 1976 - 40 Pfennig

Native Orchids The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the German Democratic Republic publishes six multi-colored special postal stamps depicting native orchids. NATURE RESPONSIBILITY - ORCHIDS With more than 20,000 species, orchids are one of the richest and most diverse plant families in the world. Since time immemorial, they claim the special interest of countless nature lovers because of their beauty and colourfulness. Their main area of ​​distribution are the tropics and subtropics, where they mainly occur as tree-breakers (epiphytes). In temperate climates, including Europe, they are already reaching the limit of their distribution and are exclusively soil dwellers. Their share of the total number of European plant species reaches just under 2 percent. Here they are mainly bound to locations that were created by limited human intervention and management forms. This results in the particular problem of their conservation in Europe in connection with the worldwide efforts to protect them, in which the GDR, in which as one of the few countries without exception all orchids are protected, occupies a leading position in the world. 40-pfennig-value: Bug-bush herb - Orchis coriophora (L.) This quite heat-loving, 15 to 40 cm high, an unpleasant leaf bug smell exhibiting, in west and central Europe as well as in the central and southern Eastern Europe occurring kind was formerly quite common. Their brown-greenish-green, variable in coloration inflorescences with the shortly after blooming strongly repulsed flower lips shone forth from numerous extensively managed dry to wet meadows. Decades ago, a sharp decline began. Today, this species is e.g. in Belgium, the FRG, the GDR (only one of formerly 300 occurrences), the People's Republic of Poland and CSSR threatened as the most endangered European orchid species from extinction.