Fungi Get the Stamp of Approval

In its ongoing "Fauna + Flora" series of postage stamps, Ireland's An Post has issued 4 new stamps featuring a variety of mushrooms found in Ireland. Neither Fauna nor Flora, the series is now referred to as "Fauna + Flora (fungi)." I guess that works.

The 4 lucky choices? Well you've got:

* Pink Waxcap (Hygrocybe calyptriformis)

* Scarlet Elf Cup (Sarcoscypha austriaca)

* Parasol (Macrolepiota procera)

* Orange Birch Bolete (Leccinum versipelle)

The Elf Cup and Parasol are fairly common in New England and can be found in most regional field guides.

You can see the whole collection here. And you can peruse the An Post website and see their entire line of fungi stamps here!

This is hardly the first time a country has featured mushrooms as means of decorative delivery. You can see a great list of stamps here. The page will take a minute to load as everything is on one page. This is a great site as you can click on each sheet of stamps to get a higher quality image. Notice a few countries not on the list? Yes that's right. The US is not represented! Our neighbors to the North and South have mushroom stamps... but not us? I mean we're thinking of doing Holiday Nutcrackers and we can't have any beloved fungi?!

If you know of any out there, let me know. I've googled the last half hour and came up with nothing. Well not exactly nothing... I did find this service. I guess I could make my own.