Just like stamps years in a book, edelweiss

While tidying up the other day, I found one. Neatly protected by soft, pink toilet paper, it sat between the pages of one of my favorite children's books, 'Alone in the World'. And that is almost what this imaginative little plant was: alone in the world. Nowadays a rare plant in the wild, but apparently not about 25 years ago. Surely this beautiful little flower must have been wedged between pages 120 and 121 for at least that long. I was surprised, a real one. edelweiss. It is inevitable that I found my edelweiss in Austria. During one of our hiking trips in the high mountains of Carinthia. In 2005, Austria issued a special stamp featuring an edelweiss. The stamp is embroidered. The traditional family business Hämmerle & Vogel from Lustenau produced the stamps. There were approximately 30 weeks between the very first step and the final product. During this period, six employees focused exclusively on making the stamps. They used 300 kilograms of thread in the process. Incidentally, Austria was not the first country in the world to issue an embroidered stamp. That honor belonged to Switzerland. However, the Austrian embroidery was perfected even further. In fact, even the perforations were embroidered.   Austria 2005 Although edelweiss is the symbol of the Swiss Alps, to my surprise, I did not find a single stamp issued by Switzerland featuring the plant. I am convinced that they do exist. So if anyone can help me with a photo or a link, please do! I did, however, find a stamp with a lot of edelweiss on it, issued by Bosnia and Herzegovina. That was not exactly what I had expected. While there are mountains in the south and east, they are not as high as in the Alps. The plant can probably be found on Mount Maglić, the highest point in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at 2386 meters, on the border with Montenegro. After all, the plant prefers to settle on scree, rubble, and limestone rocks at an altitude between 1700 and 3400 meters.   Bosnia and Herzegovina 2003 Fortunately, things have been going a bit better for the edelweiss in recent years. That was once quite different. Edelweiss was picked on a large scale for its medicinal properties. The plant is a folk remedy for stomach pain. The tourism industry did the beautiful star-shaped flower no good either. For bookmarks, keychains, and pens, the flower no longer needs to be picked from the mountains. Nurseries offer a solution for this. Besides the Alps, edelweiss is also found in the high mountains of Asia. I also found a stamp issued by Japan in 1984 and one issued by Kazakhstan in 2002.     Japan 1984 Kazakhstan 2002 In summer, the edelweiss protects itself from the sun thanks to the fine hairs on the flower. The fine down absorbs almost all of the harmful ultraviolet rays. Only the necessary light is allowed through. In winter, these same downy hairs protect against the cold and snow. And those hairs, on my dried edelweiss, are still completely intact after all these years. Leontopodium alpinum, a special little plant.