It adorns Sean Connery's forearm, one-pound coins and stamps. Football clubs from Partick to Inverness and the Scottish rugby side-wear it with pride. It is, of course, the thistle, a symbol of our nation for more than 500 years.
James III first stamped the thistle on the nation's coins in 1470. In England, at the same time, the War of the Roses raged and the Scots adopted the thistle in response to the roses of England.
Botanists have long pondered which thistle the Scots chose, for there are several native varieties: the Musk and the Melancholy; the Spear and the Stemless; Our Lady's and the Cotton Thistle. All have been considered, but to some extent this misses the point, for the Scottish thistle is an emblem archetypal rather than a genuine natural variety for the nation.
National emblems were the latest Renaissance fashion, re-inventions of the classical symbols of ancient Rome, but now given a uniquely national twist. The Scots were conscious they had never been conquered by the Romans and as such had never been part of the Classical world that was being revived. So they may have intentionally chosen a distinctly unclassical plant, in the form of the thistle, to highlight their 'barbarous' origins.
Another dimension of Renaissance emblems was the motto. For the thistle it's that well-known piece of Latin 'Nemo me impune lacessit'- roughly, 'let no-one assail me with impunity'.
Popular legend accords the thistle a special place in Scottish history right back at the very foundation of the kingdom during the Viking raids. The Vikings were planning a surprise attack on the Scots but the patriotic plant got in the way. Treading on them, the Vikings raiders cried out in pain warning the Scots of their imminent attack. Historical fiction perhaps, but it has inspired generations of Scots to crush thistles in their hands in pursuit of another fiction proving their Scottish identity.
Renaissance observers probably wouldn't have seen it that way. For them, the thistle was a chivalric symbol, a badge of status, for the Scottish kings. James V had it built into the gateway of Linlithgow Palace in the badge of the knightly order of St Andrew, or the Thistle, along with all the other emblems of the chivalric orders he belonged to the English order of the Garter, the French order of St Michael and the Golden Fleece in a public display of his social credibility.
When James VII revived the order in 1687 to reward his privy councillors, he removed the Protestant congregation from Holyrood Abbey Church and had the special Thistle Chapel constructed for the order. When he fled the country, a Protestant mob broke into the chapel to smash the knights' stalls and the marble flooring before looting the royal tombs.
Despite the demise of the Stewart dynasty, the thistle survived as a national symbol to become synonymous with the nation as a whole.
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