About This Stamp
The African Violets definitive was issued on October 8, 1993, as a replacement for the Wood Duck booklets.
The magenta, yellow, green, and black stamp was designed by Ned Seidler and printed for KCS Industries, Inc., for Sennett Enterprises, on a Champlain gravure webfed press. The stamp was distributed in booklet form as one or two panes of 10 stamps, with two across and five down, printed by gravure printing cylinders of four hundred subjects. One group of four cylinder numbers preceded by the letter ‘K’ appears on each binding stub. The stamp was perforated 10 x 11 on a sheetfed stroke perforator.
The African violet or Saintpaulia is named after Baron Walter von Saint Paul Illaire, the district commissioner of Tanga province, who discovered the plant in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in Africa in 1892. They range in flower color from white, pink, violet, yellow, and some even green, and the flowers may be either single (five petals) or double (more than five). Saintpaulias grow from 2.4-6 inches tall and can be anywhere from 2.4-12 inches wide. The leaves are rounded, and the flowers grow in clusters of 3-10.