Plant Badges

[MacBean]

I'll start by saying I know that boxwood is a plant badge which is traditional, and available in the Rocky Mountains of North America.

Boxwood is available in many east coast gardens and parks. However, this one puzzles me, as I thought Clan Chattan generally used whortleberry, a heath. True, that web pages do mention boxwood first for MacGillivray. The two plants do look vaguely related, but are actually unrelated and distinct. The heaths often have edible berries while boxwood is seriously toxic throughout and smells like cat piss, but makes a great hedge, though susceptible to diseases.

There are lots of whortleberry relatives commonly available in many regions, including blueberry, cranberry, lingonberry, and barberry, or even bearberry (kinikinik) and dozens of other low-to middle growing, small woody plants with round edible berries with small evergreen leaves.

[MacBean]

er, forgot, whortleberries look live the picture in my avatar.