September 11, 2017
3147 ROMANIA (Harghita) - The virgin forest from Tinovul Luci Nature Reserve
Virgin forest is a natural woodland where tree and shrub species are present in various stages of their life cycle and as dead wood in various stages of decay, with a more or less complex vertical and horizontal structures. In virgin forests the dynamics inherent to living systems are connected to ecological properties of the dominant tree species, impact of other organisms and to the impact of abiotic factors related to the substrate, climate and to the complex of topography and water table.
Unfortunately, only 21% of the original virgin forests that once existed on earth remained, and less from 3% of these are in Europe, mainly in Eastern Europe, including Romania. The Carpathians still harbour around 300,000 hectares of such forests including the largest tracts of virgin forests in Europe. They shrink dramatically each year through legal, but especially illegal, deforestation, tacitly accepted by corrupt authorities, interested only in immediate gains, at any cost.
One of these virgin forests survived in Tinovul Luci, a natural forest and flora reservation situated in eastern Transylvania, in the Harghita Mountains (at an altitude of 1,080 m in the western part of the Sâncrăieni village). It covers an area of 273 hectares in a huge caldera of a former volcano (subsequently transformed into a lake that clogged), and is an area of mountain bogs (the largest in Romania) covered with woody vegetation, grasses and flowers.
About the stamp
The stamp is part of the series Love Nature! Ceahlău National Park, about which I wrote here.
Old-growth forest - Wikipedia
Forests in the Carpathians - Carpathian Integrated Biodiversity Information System
Tinovul Luci (rom) - Wikipedia
Tinovul Luci, comuna Sâncrăieni (rom) - Green Harghita
Tinovul Luci, o lume mirifică şi stranie (rom) - amfostacolo.ro
Sender: Dănuţ Ivănescu
Sent from Poiana Mărului (Braşov / Romania), on 26.07.2017
Photo: George Năzăreanu