Loyalty bonus stamp 2020 – camellia 03.03.2021

The “rose of winter”

This year, Austrian Post is once again thanking its subscribers for their loyalty with a beautiful floral motif on a stamp.

The loyalty bonus stamp for 2020 features the attractive camellia (Camellia japonica), a plant which is native to East Asia. It was named after Georg Joseph Kamel, a Moravian Jesuit priest and naturalist who studied the flora of the Philippines. The evergreen camellia bush with its large white, pink or red blooms belongs to the family of tea plants. It can grow to be several metres tall and live for a very long time – some exemplars in Europe, such as the Pillnitz camellia in Dresden, are several hundred years old. What is unusual about the camellia is its flowering period, which falls in late winter or spring. There are many different varieties of this popular ornamental shrub, some of which are winter hardy in our latitudes given the right conditions.

During the 18th century sailors brought the camellia to Europe, where it quickly became a popular ornamental plant among the nobility, being regarded as a symbol of elegance and beauty due to its rose-like flowers. In Japan, by contrast, it symbolises purity, but also death, as the red petals of some varieties fall off while there is still snow on the ground, reminding observers of drops of blood. Alexandre Dumas created a literary monument to the camellia in his novel “Camille” (The Lady with the Camellias), which is also the story on which Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” is based.

value: 0.85 Euro
first day of issue: 06.03.2021
stamp size: 33.35 x 42.00 mm
graphic design: Brigitte Heiden
printing: Joh. Enschedé Stamps B. V.
offset printing
quantity: 280,000 stamps on sheets of 50 stamps