Why We Use Wild Bog Myrtle in Our Highland Beard Care
Highland tradition, modern research and keeping old knowledge alive
Most people walking through the Highlands will pass bog myrtle without ever knowing what it is. It grows quietly through wet moorland, bogs and around loch edges, looking fairly unremarkable until you reach down and rub one of its leaves between your fingers.
Then you understand why people noticed it.
The scent is fresh, green, resinous and immediately distinctive. For generations, however, bog myrtle was valued for far more than its smell. It was part of the practical knowledge of people who understood the landscape around them and knew how to make use of what grew there.
That is where our interest begins.
Long before Hairy Highlander existed, plants, foraging, bushcraft and understanding the natural world were already part of our lives. We grew up interested in what grew around us, how plants had traditionally been used and how previous generations worked much more closely with the land.
We did not create a beard-care company and then go looking for a Highland ingredient to give it a story. The knowledge came first. The brand came later.
Bog myrtle is one of the clearest examples of that.
A wild botanical woven into Highland life
Bog myrtle, Myrica gale, thrives in wet, acidic ground and is strongly associated with the landscapes of northern and western Scotland. Its history of human use is long and varied.
Historical accounts record bog myrtle being used in brewing, to scent linen and bedding, in dyeing and tanning, and as a flavouring. Its Gaelic names also survive in Scottish place-name history, including the association of New Deer in Buchan with the “field of bog myrtle.”
One of its best-known Scottish uses was as an insect repellent. The botanical literature records that bog myrtle had been used for this purpose in folklore for centuries, while later testing found its oil could repel the Highland biting midge.
That kind of knowledge matters to us because it says something about how people once understood the landscape. They did not need to know the molecular structure of every constituent in a leaf to recognise that a plant was useful. They observed it, worked with it and passed that knowledge on.
Its connection with the skin
The part of bog myrtle’s history that especially interests us as beard-care makers is its traditional connection with the skin.
A major botanical review records the leaves of Myrica gale being used historically for dermal disease in parts of Europe. There are Scottish traditions around the plant too, and by the early 2000s bog myrtle had attracted serious interest as a skincare ingredient within Scotland.
We are careful not to confuse traditional use with modern medical proof. An old herbal practice does not automatically prove that a finished cosmetic can treat a skin condition.
What interests us is the continuity. People had associated bog myrtle with practical skin use long before modern cosmetic science began examining its chemistry.
Then the laboratories caught up.
What modern research found
Modern research has examined both bog myrtle essential oil and several different extracts.
A 2013 peer-reviewed study found antioxidant and antimicrobial activity in bog myrtle essential oil and extracts, including activity against Gram-positive bacteria. The researchers concluded that the material had potential for use as a cosmetic ingredient.
Other research has reported antifungal activity in bog myrtle essential oil and fruit extracts, again with potential cosmetic applications discussed.
This does not mean that every product containing bog myrtle is automatically antimicrobial or antifungal. Extraction method, concentration and the finished formulation all matter.
That distinction is important to us.
The value of the research is that it gives modern scientific context to a plant that people had already been using for generations. Traditional knowledge gives us somewhere worth looking; modern research helps us understand why.
When Boots became interested
Bog myrtle’s modern skincare story became particularly interesting when Alliance Boots began researching it.
Boots filed patent applications concerning the use of Myrica gale oil in topical products for skin and hair, including cosmetic and scalp-care applications.
This was not a brief experiment.
A 2007 Scottish Parliament debate recorded that Alliance Boots had carried out around five years of research and trials before sweet gale, another name for bog myrtle, became part of its Botanics skincare range. The work involved Highland Natural Products, the Scottish Agricultural College, Cranfield University, the University of Bradford and Kew Gardens. Demand was significant enough that expanded Scottish cultivation was being discussed.
We find that fascinating.
Not because Boots’ work proves what our own products do. It does not.
What it shows is that one of Britain’s major skincare companies and a group of research organisations became seriously interested in the same wild Scottish shrub that people had already been using for generations.
Old knowledge and modern research met in the middle.
Why that matters for beard care
A beard is not just hair.
Underneath it is skin, and anyone who has grown a substantial beard knows that the skin beneath can become dry, uncomfortable and difficult to reach.
That is why we have never thought of beard oil as simply fragrance carried in oil.
Great beard care starts with the skin beneath.
Bog myrtle has a long history of practical use, a traditional connection with the skin and genuine modern cosmetic research behind it. That gives us a real reason to be interested in it.
Not because “wild Highland botanical” sounds good on a bottle, but because there is substance behind the story.
We know it from the land
There is another part of this that matters to Hairy Highlander.
We go out and gather wild botanicals ourselves where we have permission to forage.
Knowing a plant in the landscape is very different from knowing its name on a supplier specification sheet. You learn where it grows, what healthy growth looks like, how it changes through the season and how much can responsibly be taken without putting pressure on the individual plant or the wider area.
Our approach is deliberately light. We move through an area rather than repeatedly taking from the same shrub, leaving the vast majority untouched. That is why scale matters. We are fortunate to work with estates covering more than 200,000 acres of Scottish wilderness, giving us the space to forage responsibly, move between areas and avoid putting unnecessary pressure on any one patch.
That relationship with the land was not developed for the brand. Foraging, bushcraft, plants and natural preparations were already part of our lives.
That is why wilderness knowledge is such an important part of Hairy Highlander. It is not an aesthetic added afterwards. It is part of where the brand came from.
Keeping tradition alive, without pretending we live in the past
When we talk about keeping Highland knowledge alive, we are not claiming that our bog myrtle infusion is an ancient beard-oil recipe.
It is not.
What is old is the knowledge of the plant itself: recognising it, understanding that previous generations valued it and remembering the practical uses associated with it.
What we do with that knowledge is modern.
Once gathered, our bog myrtle is carefully prepared before being incorporated into our own botanical infusion process. Much of the published science concerns essential oils or specific extracts, which are not identical to our own preparation, so we do not pretend that laboratory findings from one extraction method automatically prove the performance of another.
Instead, the research helps us understand the plant and gives us a reason to continue working with it intelligently.
Wild ingredients, modern standards
Foraging wild botanicals does not mean the finished process is rough or approximate. Once an ingredient comes back from the landscape, the work becomes controlled and precise. Our formulations are made to specific measurements and percentages, with each ingredient carefully accounted for.
Our cosmetic formulas are safety assessed through a Cosmetic Product Safety Report (CPSR) and undergo the appropriate laboratory and safety testing for the type of product being made.
That balance matters to us.
We can gather a plant by hand in the Highlands and still formulate to precise modern standards.
We can respect traditional knowledge without using tradition as a substitute for safety.
The wild gives us the starting point. The finished product still has to earn its place as a properly assessed modern cosmetic.
Wilderness knowledge meets beard science
This is really where the two sides of Hairy Highlander come together.
Our experience with plants, foraging, bushcraft and the natural world influences where we look for ingredients, while more than a decade of making beard care influences what we actually do with them.
We do not automatically follow the same ingredient choices simply because they have become common throughout beard care. We look at how an oil or botanical behaves on beard hair and the skin beneath it, what it contributes to the finished formula and whether it fits the kind of natural beard care we want to make.
That same thinking runs through our choice of carrier oils, our use of essential oils rather than synthetic fragrance, and the ingredients we deliberately choose to leave out.
You can explore that side of the brand on our Beard Science page, where we explain more about our formulation choices and the reasoning behind them.
For us, traditional knowledge and modern beard science are not opposites. One gives us the instinct to look at bog myrtle. The other helps us decide what to do with it.
Why bog myrtle remains part of what we do
Bog myrtle is still growing wild across Scotland today, just as it has for generations.
Most people will walk past it without recognising it. Fewer still will know about its history in Highland life, its traditional connection with the skin or the modern cosmetic research that eventually followed.
That is part of what makes it so interesting to us.
It represents much of what we want Hairy Highlander to stand for: knowing the land, respecting old knowledge, investigating why ingredients were valued and applying what still makes sense today.
We are not interested in using Scottish ingredients simply to make our products look more Scottish.
We use them when there is a reason.
