Click the tartan to view its entry in The Scottish Registers of Tartans which includes registration details, restrictions, and registrant information.
Unregistered tartans may link to one of the web's online design environments for similar information.
For any questions about reproduction of designs or weaving of these tartans, please contact the registrant directly or via this website.
Arbor Day
"Oh pallid leaf and blossom sweet,
So fair, so faint, so softly white,
Spring's breath doth woo you from your sleep
To gladden woodland ways with light."
~ Arbutus, Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), 1861-1913
Happy Arbor Day! The arbutus tree, also known as the Madroo, Madroa, Bearberry, or Strawberry Tree, with its sculptural limbs and cinnamon-red bark that peels away like parchment, is one of nature’s most striking eccentrics. Found clinging to rocky coastal bluffs and sunlit slopes, especially in the Pacific Northwest, this evergreen defies the typical softness of the forest with its leathery leaves and twisted, muscular branches. It blooms with delicate bell-shaped flowers in spring, then bears clusters of rough-skinned, coral-colored berries that feed birds but rarely tempt humans. In Indigenous Coast Salish folklore, the arbutus is a sacred tree, said to have been the only one to survive the Great Flood—its roots holding fast to the rock as the waters rose. As a result, it is never to be burned as firewood, a custom still respected by many today. Across the Atlantic, in Celtic myth, the related strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) was associated with the Otherworld, its fruit and flowers—appearing together—seen as a symbol of magic and mystery.
Arbor Day is celebrated on various days and ways throughout the world by people who study, enjoy, plant trees, and nurture green spaces which in turn, nurture our own souls. 💚 💛 🤍 🧡 🌳 🌳 🌳
The arbutus tree, often called the madrona in the Pacific Northwest or strawberry tree in Europe, is a botanical paradox—a broadleaf evergreen with bark that peels like paper in the sun. With its twisting limbs and fiery copper trunks, the arbutus looks more like a flame frozen in time than a tree. It grows where other trees dare not: clinging to rocky cliffs, coastal bluffs, and dry, windswept hillsides, where it can bask in the full sun and shrug off the salty mist.
In British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, the arbutus is a beloved anomaly. Locals prize it not just for its sculptural beauty, but for its stubborn independence. It resists cultivation, growing wild and willful, dropping leaves in midsummer and refusing to conform to the tidy seasonal habits of maples and firs. Among the Coast Salish peoples, the arbutus holds a sacred status—there are legends that after the Great Flood, the arbutus tree was the only one to offer its branches to help people climb to safety.
Across the Atlantic, in southern Europe, the arbutus species Arbutus unedo—the strawberry tree—flourishes in Mediterranean scrublands. Its red, berry-like fruits, which ripen in the fall, were admired by the Romans, though Pliny the Elder warned against eating too many: “Unedo,” he wrote, “I eat only one.” In Portugal, the fruit is distilled into a fiery spirit called medronho, which locals claim is best enjoyed with a story and a sea breeze.
Further south, in Ireland and southwestern Britain, the strawberry tree has carved out a niche in pockets of temperate woodland. It’s one of the few trees that bears both fruit and flowers at the same time—small, bell-shaped blooms and spiky red berries sharing the same branch. There, it’s associated with folklore and fairies, and in County Kerry, the arbutus is sometimes called the “Irish cherry.” It has even earned a place in heraldry and poetry, celebrated for its beauty and endurance.
From rocky coastal cliffs to sun-drenched Mediterranean hills, the arbutus defies expectations. It flourishes in places of hardship, blooms in the midst of decay, and peels away the old to reveal the new. In every region it grows, the arbutus seems to echo a deeper truth—that beauty can be most striking when it’s unruly, and resilience is often clothed in red bark and crooked branches.
For more on the arbutus on the Pacific coast, click the Strawberry tree fruits!