By design, boots come with the shaft ending in a collar called a scallop. The function of the callop is to prevent the boot from pinching your leg when you take a step.
We can only guess it’s called like that because, in most of its open types, its form resembles an opened scallops’ shell, taking the form of a deep letter “V”. But that doesn’t mean flat scallops are not common, and we’ll see in a minute what those are called. 

Scalloping is not boot exclusive, and the term is also used on leather shoes, where it’s represented as a wavy cut, with wavy edges, on some of the shoes’ components.

Impressive scallop designs can be met especially on cowboy boots, where they can be stitched, deep or shallow, taking many colorful forms, while others are only lightly decorated. Some scalloped collars also house the pull straps.

An image is worth a thousand words, so let’s see what types of scallops we can meet on boots.