The coat of arms of the present-day German free state of Saxony shows a tenfold horizontally-partitioned (Barry of ten) field of black (sable) and gold/yellow (or) stripes,[1] charged with a green (vert) crancelin (a stylized common rue) running from the viewer's top-left to bottom-right (in bend).

The shield "Barry of ten sable and or, a crancelin vert" deduce from the Saxon counts of Ballenstedt (in present-day Saxony-Anhalt), ancestors of the ducal House of Ascania.

The Ascanian margrave Albert the Bear achieved the Saxon ducal title in 1138; when his Welf successor Henry the Lion was deposed by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1180, Albert's son Bernhard, Count of Anhalt received the remaining Saxon territories around Wittenberg and Lauenburg, and the ducal title.

Legend goes that when he rode in front of the emperor, at the occasion of his investiture, carrying his escutcheon with the Ballenstedt coat of arms (barry sable and or), Barbarossa took the rue wreath he wore against the heat of the sun from his head, hanging it over Bernhard's shield and thus creating the Saxonian crancelin vert.

The Saxe-Wittenberg black and golden shield already displayed the Gothic crancelin, probably symbolizing the waiver of the Lauenburg lands.