Queen decoration with ice buttercup

The Greenlandic postal service Tusass will issue a total of eight stamps with plant motifs in the years 2025-28, designed by the artist Buuti Pedersen. This week, the third and fourth stamps with ice buttercup (in Greenlandic: sungaartuaqqakkut ilaat) and star gentian (in Greenlandic: tungujortutsiaq) will be issued.

There are 520 native plant species in Greenland, and with his great interest in botany, Buuti Pedersen has chosen two fine and colorful representatives of the Greenlandic flora.

– Ice buttercup grows around Tasiilaq, and it is also said to have been found at the airport Nerlerit Inaat near Ittoqqortoormiit. There are a lot of them when you get a little higher up in the mountains near Tasiilaq; especially in places where the last snow disappears, because it requires a moist habitat, Buuti Pedersen tells Sermitsiaq. The royal family with Queen Margrethe, Prince Henrik, Princess Alexandra and Prince Joachim visited Greenland in 1997, and Buuti Pedersen, who lived in Tasiilaq from 1995 to 2006, arranged the flower decorations for the gala dinner in the town's sports hall. I knew that the Queen loved ice ranunculus, which of course had to be included in the table decorations. I picked a lot of them with roots so that I could replant them in the mountains after the royal visit, Buuti Pedersen tells us. Did the Queen comment on your choice of flowers? The then Prime Minister Lars-Emil Johansen called me up to the Queen's table, where we talked about the beautiful flower.

Greenlandic names

The other plant on the stamps is star gentian, which lives in West Greenland; among other places in Kangerlussuaq, where it grows between the houses and in the terrain around the airport.

“We don’t see it that often. Gentian species tend to hide a bit, but they are actually very beautiful with their clear blue color, which only comes out when the sun shines,” says Buuti Pedersen.

The stamps include the names of the plants in Greenlandic, Danish and Latin, along with a map of their distribution in Greenland.

However, many of the 520 native plants do not have a Greenlandic name.

Buuti Pedersen asked people in Tasiilaq whether the ice buttercup has an East Greenlandic name, but was told: – If it’s not a plant that we eat, then we don’t give it a name!

The Post Office has therefore contacted the Language Secretariat, which has put Greenlandic names for the two plants on the stamps, issued this week.