Thistle is the stuff of legend

The Spear thistle is regarded as the true Scottish thistle. It has been our national emblem and the embodiment of our nationhood for more than seven centuries, appearing on early coinage and in our heraldry. And it is the symbolic representation of the Order of the Thistle, the senior order of chivalry in Scotland.

The tall, handsome plant has eye-catching purple flowers and leaves tipped with vicious spines which are painful to brush against. They flourish in the field margins where they are starting to flower and they are one of the few plants I give a wide berth when out walking with Inka.

According to legend, under cover of darkness a band of invading Vikings were creeping up with evil intent on a sleeping Scottish encampment. One of the Norsemen stepped on a Spear thistle with his bare feet. His howls of pain alerted the sleepy sentries who wakened their comrades and the Scots fell on their would-be attackers, completely routing them.

In celebration of their escape from violent death the Spear thistle was adopted as our national emblem. But is this really how it happened? – who knows. The great thing about traditions is there’s nobody around to contradict them.

England has the rose, Ireland the shamrock, Wales the daffodil. Does the thistle represent the way we Scots see ourselves – proud and prickly, fiery and defiant – fearless in the face of attacks by an aggressor?

Mary McMurtrie in her Scottish Wild Flowers lists Milk, Melancholy – so-called because in the Middle Ages it was used to treat “all diseases of melancholy”, and Welted thistles – in all nine species, all purple-headed except Carline thistles which are yellow and named, supposedly, after the Emperor Charlemagne.

So what brought on this unsolicited botany lesson? Out with Inka I’m seeing Spear thistles and cluster-headed Creeping thistles growing along the track behind the village. I watched a bumble bee working steadily from flower to flower of a Creeping thistle feeding on nectar, supping it up through its long retractable proboscis. It paid no attention to me until I moved and my shadow fell over it and it flew off.

There are around 20 species of bumble bee and I have to confess to being quite ignorant about them. I just