Fruits & Vegetables 2020 Forever Stamps — Robert Papp Still Lifes, Booklet of 20

Issue facts

First Day of Issue: July 17, 2020
First Day City: Charleston, West Virginia
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset
Format: Double-sided booklets of 20

The set

Ten designs, each a still life of a different fruit or vegetable by Robert Papp. This one shows green and purple figs. Charleston was chosen for the first-day postmark because of Capitol Market, the city's well-known year-round farmers' market and nonprofit.

What counts as a fruit

Grocery stores get this wrong constantly. Most people have absorbed that eggplants, tomatoes and squash are botanically fruits. Fewer know that bananas are berries, or that a fig is not really a fruit at all but an inverted cluster of flowers.

Figs in America

They are a staple across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, where they originated, and comparatively unusual here. Nearly every fig grown in the United States comes from California, which supplies what the tree wants: full sun, warmth and soil that drains. Depending on variety the season runs May through November.

Most people picture the dark purple-black Mission fig, but there are also Brown Turkey (light purple), Kadota (amber), Sierra (light green) and Tiger (striped green and yellow). Flavors range from rich and almost meaty to light and citrusy, closer to a raspberry.

Pliny the Elder rated them highly, claiming figs restore strength in the young, keep the old in better health, and leave them looking younger with fewer wrinkles. Modern nutrition is more measured; a ripe fresh fig still makes the case on its own.

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