In heraldry, coupeaux are small rounded green hills, most often shown in groups of three, and they usually symbolize land, locality, and a meaningful connection to a hilly or upland landscape. Their significance is often geographic before it is moral, pointing to the bearer’s estate, a notable hill, a border region, or the natural setting of a town or family, though by extension they can also suggest stability, rootedness, and possession of the ground itself. Because heraldry often turns visible features of place into symbols of identity, coupeaux are especially at home in Scottish and civic armory, where they may represent actual hills in the district, form the base from which trees, towers, animals, or saints arise, or serve almost like a compact landscape within the shield.

They are closely related to the mount or trimount, and in some traditions the distinction is more artistic than symbolic, with coupeaux emphasizing separate rounded hillocks rather than a single stylized hill mass. Famous individual examples are less universally recognized than those of lions, eagles, or crosses, but the charge appears regularly in British heraldry, particularly in arms that want to proclaim a strong territorial identity or to allude to a place defined by heights, moors, or frontier ground. As a result, coupeaux give a coat of arms a quietly evocative quality, suggesting that the bearer is not only of a lineage, but also of a particular landscape.