The most ancient vegetable heraldic decoration – it's flowers. If other plant elements are more character decorations, the flowers coats of arms – it is the appointed signs. Most often, images of flowers for use in heraldry gold (yellow), silver (white), black, red or blue. Colouring stamp shield and heraldic figures since the thirteenth century had its own symbolic meaning: gold (yellow) symbolizes wealth, strength and permanence, a silver (white) – purity and innocence. Black, white, red, and blue signified the four elements: earth, water, fire and air.
Share the same colors in heraldry may have different interpretations belong to different genera and fashions. The most common images of flowers were roses and lilies, as these flowers are the prototypes of the image of Our Lady. Rosa symbolized beauty and perfection, Lily – purity, holiness, purity. In the arms of the British preference for roses of different shapes and colors, pedigrees belonging to the Tudors, Lancaster, York. Red damask rose was first introduced in Europe in 1270, the year.
Migrated to France rose after a crusade – it brought the Count IV Tibold Champagne. Then she came to England, where he became the emblem of the royal family of Lancaster – one branch of the dynasty of the Plantagenets. Yorkie – another branch of the same dynasty – chose to decorate the white rose flag. These dynasties were engaged in a thirty-year war that was incorporated into history as the War of the Roses (1455 – 1485 gg.). The struggle of the medieval nobility has ruined the English people: a silver (white) rose Yorks, and scarlet (red) after Lancaster weaken militant parties find mutual peaceful coexistence in the coat of arms founder of a new dynasty – Henry VII Tudor.