Badges of Clan Alpin

	PLANT BADGES:

		Scots Pine, Pine, Scots Fir
	
			Pinus sylvestris

			Gaelic: Giuthas

The whole Clan Chattan group -- Mackintosh, Macpherson, MacGillivray, MacQueen, Macbean, Farquharson, and Davidson -- have long borne Red Whortleberry (in Scotland sometimes called `Cranberry') or Bearberry or Boxwood. Now the leaves of these three plants are, for "practical" purposes, indistinguishable, and it is evident that whichever was available was used.

Farquharson, however, uses alternately Pine (and this appears on the uniforms of "The Invercauld Highlanders")> The origin of this is, that in the first stage of the Invercauld arms a Pine tree was used as mark of cadency from the basic Shaw- Mackintosh arms. It is therefore essentially a "district" badge; but shows how such things arise; and how the whole Clan Chattan uses the Box-Whortle- Cranberry plant leaves, but that, within the major clan, branch-clans may have additional sub-badges, drawn, in this case, from the armorial mark of cadency.

The objection to it, per se, is that it would suggest a Clan Alpin connection, and, where a local badge of such character exist, it should obviously be borne along with the badge of the major clan-group.

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