| PAINTEDLADY | The thistle butterfly (7,4) |
| STUART | Royal house or dynasty during whose reign the Marriage of the Thistle and the Rose took place in 1503 (6) |
| REDCAP | A name, owing to its scarlet mask, for the thistle-tweaker or goldfinch; a malevolent goblin said to reside in ruined Scottish castles; or, a member of the Royal Military Police (6) |
| NEMOMEIMPUNELACESSIT | Latin motto of the Order of the Thistle (4,2,6,8) |
| ARTICHOKE | Vegetable allied to the thistle (9) |
| LETTISH | New Order of the Thistle for East European |
| ORDER | Classification of the thistle, for example (5) |
| HIS | Belonging to him, as in the thistle! (3) |
| THETHIRTEENTH | & 53 *ETHNIC PRIDE: THE THISTLE (3,10) |
| THIS | The one here hiding among the thistles (4) |
| MACDIARMID | Hugh ___, author of 1926 poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, born Christopher Murray Grieve (10) |
| ARTICHOKES | Globe -; buds of a plant in the thistle family with edible hearts often preserved in oil (10) |
| HUGHMCDIARMID | Scottish poet whose works include A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle |
| PART | Some of the Thistle players had a role to play (4) |
| SCATTERED | Afraid to grasp tops of the thistles emblematically placed here and there (9) |
| THELASTJEDI | Confused Jade Thistle creates a Star Wars episode (3,4,4) |
| UPON | Formal 'on', as in thistle___-thistle, the alternative common name for cotton thistle (Onopordum acanthium) (4) |
| SCOTSPINES | Dominating the landscape of the Caledonian forests, national trees of a country whose other identifying symbols include thistle, tartan and the unicorn (5,5) |
| SCOTLAND | With national symbols including thistle and unicorn, the birth country of Robert Burns and Arthur Conan Doyle, location of the Glenfinnan Viaduct (8) |
| CHOKE | Valve in a carburettor; or, the inedible mass at the centre of a thistle used as a vegetable (5) |
