I would not interpret “national emblem” as narowly as Blake apparently does. I would include traditional emblems with no official status, such as John Bull for England and Uncle Sam for the United States, and I certainly would include emblems used on coats of arms, flags, stamps, coins, etc., as evidence that something is a national emblem.
So, the fact that the kangaroo and emu are the supports on the Australian coat of arms is strong evidence that they are national emblems, unless they are part of the coat of armsd for some other reason. (An example of another reason is the lion and the unicorn on the royal coat of arms of the UK – they are not emblems of the UK, but the lion is an emblem of England and the unicorn is an emblem of Scotland).
More evidence of the kangaroo being a national emblem are that it appeared on the first Australian stamps (in a display of nationalism which was reversed a year later when a new government issued stamps with King George V on them), it appeared on Australian pennies before decimal currency, and it’s used as an emblem by Qantas as the Australian national airline.
And I’m happy to live with varying degrees of certainty about whether something is a national emblem, like being 100% sure of the kangaroo, 99% sure of the emu, 80% sure of the koala, and 60% sure of the platypus is a national emblem of Australia. Life is full of fuzziness like that.
But I do agree that the story about kangaroos and emus not being able to walk backward is just a myth.
National plants or animals don’t have to be natives: think of all the countries with the lion as a symbol, or all the mythical creatures, like dragons, unicorns and two-headed eagles.
Funnily enough this came up in conversation today - it seems that the oak is the national tree of Germany, don’t know what tschild & fish cheer think about this.
Wales I feel is pretty unique in having a national vegetable :dubious: in the leek ! That is in addition to a the daffodil and dragon.
Croatia is probably the ‘kuna’ a weasel like animal which appears on its currency.
You only need to look at rugby shirts to see what different countries use as their symbol.
Plants - Scotland - thistle, Ireland - shamrock, New Zealand - a silver fern, England - rose.
Animals - France - a cockerel, South Africa - a springbok, Argentina - a puma
As far as I know the oak has no official status, but it has been used as a German symbol for centuries. Among many other things it has been used on coins from different eras, including the German version of the lower euro-cent coins. A particularly nice example is the the 50-Pfennig coin (1949-2002) that depicts a woman planting an oak as a metaphor for the rebuilding of Germany after the war.
Although I don’t know whether it qualifies as an official national bird, a black eagle is used on the federal coat of arms, some variants of the flag, federal seals etc. This is a common design, another well-known example is the “fat hen” in parliament.
Interestingly there is no real consensus whether it is supposed to be a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) or a White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla).
