1 Peso Flora del Caribe - Bidens Pilosa

Cuba's "Flora del Caribe" peso series of 1997 was issued during the depths of the Special Period — the economic crisis triggered by the Soviet Union's collapse that left the island with severe shortages of fuel, food, and hard currency. These colorized collector pesos were explicitly aimed at the foreign numismatic market, generating convertible currency at a time when the domestic peso had little purchasing power. Bidens pilosa, the species depicted, is a pantropical weed so aggressively common that its appearance in a prestige flora series is a quietly peculiar editorial choice.