Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Netherlands - Summer snowflake (NL-149230)

Christiane from the Netherlands sent me a card connected with her job. She works at the Utrecht University and the part of it are the botanic gardens. This card is something absolutely new in my collection and it made me search for some information about Leucojum aestivum (though I prefer it's English name - Summer snowflake) :) I can't tell you if I've ever seen such flowers, but I like the small, bell-shaped flowers very much :)


NL-149230

The snowflakes are native to southern Europe, from the Pyrenées to Romania and western Russia, but they have been introduced and have naturalized in many other areas, including the east coast of North America. They have narrow, strap-like, dark green leaves. The flowers are small and bell-shaped, white with a green (or occasionally yellow) spot at the end of each tepal. They have a slight fragrance.

Leucojum aestivum (Summer snowflake)
has a natural range, taking in Europe, southwest Asia and northern Iran, and growing in wetter habitats including damp woodland, riversides and swamps. Despite its common name it also flowers from March to May, though slightly later than the Spring Snowflake. It is a taller plant than Leucojum vernum, growing to around 60 cm (2 ft), but its flowers are smaller and are carried in an umbel of between three and seven.

3 comments:

- said...

Didn't know you have to use a '95' stamp voor Poland? Because it is in Europe, 77 is sufficient ;) Funny to see a card from the town/place were I life! The botanic gardens are beautiful!

Оксана said...

I have no idea about the postage in the Netherlands (I was sending some cards from the Dutch seaside in January, but I don't remember the price), but I also thought 0,95 euro was a bit too much. Maybe some people just overfrank their cards and letters, because they don't know the price or don't want to use the same stamps each time :)

- said...

Yeah I can understand that because we have boring stamps in the Netherlands. Just one for inside Europa and one for outside Europa. A few weeks ago there were some new stamps available for inside Europe but they are a little bit boring as well.... I don't know why we have so many choice for stamps inside the Netherlands but not for outside. In other countries are more different stamps!