Flower of Scotland

i took this picture a while ago...but was thinking of Scotland tonight so i played with it a bit.

it's a thistle.

In the language of flowers, the thistle (like the burr) is an ancient Celtic symbol of nobility of character as well as of birth, for the wounding or provocation of a thistle yields punishment. For this reason the thistle is the symbol of the Order of the Thistle, a high chivalric order of Scotland.

Another story is that a Viking attacker stepped on one at night and cried out, so alerting the defenders of a Scottish castle. Whatever the justification, the national flower of Scotland is Scots Thistle (Onopordum acanthium).

i still have a tiny thistle that i got in Glencoe, Scotland (the most beautiful place i've ever seen)...that i pressed in a phone book. i framed it and it's hanging on my wall.

because to me thistle's are both beautiful & painful and because they are the "flower of Scotland"(where my grandparents came to America from) i also have a rather
large thistle tattoo on my shoulder blade (i know not the usually tattoo subject).

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