Heather

Where it grows

Common heather, or ling, dominates acid moorland and bog from the Scottish Highlands to the European Alps, the Pyrenees, the Atlas, and the Carpathians. It thrives where waterlogged peat and high rainfall would defeat almost every other shrub. Rotational burning by Scottish gamekeepers maintains heather moor for red grouse.

How to recognise it

A wiry evergreen subshrub thirty to sixty centimetres tall with tiny scale-like overlapping leaves arranged in four rows along the stems. From August through October, dense terminal racemes of tiny, four-petaled, urn-shaped flowers cover the plant, ranging from white through pale pink to deep magenta. Bell heather (Erica cinerea), a related species, has nodding bell flowers.

Garden & cultural uses

Heather honey is dark, intensely aromatic, and thixotropic — it sets in the comb and has to be forced out, giving it the highest market price of any British honey. Garden cultivars include hundreds of named selections with gold, orange, or bronze foliage in addition to flower colour.

In symbolism

White heather is considered lucky in Scotland and Ireland; Queen Victoria’s purchase of Balmoral and her affection for the flower turned heather into a tourist emblem of the Scottish Highlands.