Introduction

Plant symbols are both very similar to and very different from animal symbols. National or state flowers resemble state butterflies, adopted primarily for their beauty. Official trees are often adopted because they provide people with wood or food, similar to such symbols as the white-tailed deer. Commercial interests may promote official fruits, just as they promoted the honeybee.

But plant symbols are more sublime than animal symbols. They are often represented on flags by colors alone, notably green. The lion is a popular symbol because it’s such a powerful predator, capable of killing prey and adversaries alike. But mighty oak trees don’t kill; they simply have the power to grow big and endure, living far longer than any lion.

Plant symbols might be roughly divided into three categories:

Vegetation

Many national, state and local symbols use plants, icons or colors to represent plants in general. As you might guess, the most popular color used for such purposes is green.

Flags featuring the color green are most common in Africa, Latin America and among oceanic island nations and territories. On some flags, coats of arms or seals, agriculture is represented by the color green or by a particular plant or crop. On others, forests are represented by trees or the color green.

Plant Parts

Can you imagine adopting a grizzly bear’s foot as the official state foot? How about naming the great white shark’s head the national head?

Obviously, that would be absurd. Yet people don’t think twice about adopting plant parts.

In fact, the most popular ecosymbols are flowers, which are only a part of a living thing. Just as animals have heads, bodies and legs, so do plants have leaves, stems and roots. Plants may have flowers for only a few months or weeks out of the year, and some don’t bear flowers at all.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these symbolic plant parts.

Flowers

The most popular plant part by far is the blossom. Many nations recognize national flowers. Official flowers have also been designated by all 50 U.S. states, all of Canada’s provinces and territories, Japan’s prefectures and many other jurisdictions. Many nations and states even celebrate their official flowers on their flags.

Some official flowers are arboreal. Examples of such tree-borne blossoms include dogwoods and magnolias. Rhododendrons are examples of official flowers that grow on shrubs. Goldenrods and Yukon Territory’s fireweed are examples of herbs.

Northwest Territory’s mountain avens grows close to the ground. Arizona adopted the blossom of the saguaro cactus.

A few places have adopted official flowers that aren’t even flowers. For example, Maine designated the “pine cone and tassel” its official flower, while the Japanese prefecture of [???] adopted the leaf of the red maple.

Edible Plants

Botanists (people who study plants) define a fruit as the reproductive body of a seed plant, especially one with a sweet pulp associated with the seed. If you eat an apple, a cherry or a blackberry, you’re chewing a sweet pulp. You may encounter small seeds in the center of an apple (commonly called an apple core) or a single large seed in the center of a cherry. Blackberries are filled with numerous very tiny seeds that may get stuck in your teeth.

In popular usage, the term fruit is more generally restricted to larger arboreal fruits, such as apples, bananas and mangos. Grapes (which grow on vines) are also commonly classified as fruits, rather than berries.

Several states have adopted official fruits, and there are even a few national fruits.

Berry is a term commonly applied to very tiny fruits. Some, such as mulberries, are arboreal, but many grow on shrubs (e.g. blackberries), while strawberries grow close to the ground. Several states have adopted official berries, primarily blueberries, blackberries, cranberries and strawberries.

Nuts are dry fruits or seeds protected by hard shells. The most familiar varieties are arboreal, except for peanuts, which grow underground. A few states have designated official nuts, particularly the walnut, pecan and hazelnut. The coconut could loosely be classified as a nut. However, coconuts grow on palms (monocots), while true nuts grow on dicots, including deciduous trees and shrubs.

Vegetable is not a scientific term. It’s generally applied to edible plant parts that aren’t associated with reproduction. Another difference is that fruits are typically eaten raw (though they can be cooked), while vegetables are typically cooked (though they can also be eaten raw).

For example, lettuce is considered a vegetable because we eat its leaves. Similarly, people eat celery stalks and the roots of onions and sugar beets.

But what about tomatoes? They contain seeds, yet they’re usually displayed with vegetables in grocery stores.

Technically, a tomato is a fruit. However, it’s popularly considered a vegetable, partly because it doesn’t grow on trees and also because tomatoes are often cooked like a vegetable. Pumpkins are fruits, too.

Peppers (adopted as symbols by New Mexico and Texas) are also fruits that are commonly thought of as vegetables.

Edible grass seeds are called grains. Many are raised as animal feed. Grains consumed by people include corn, rice and wheat. These are sometimes called cereal greains.

Cereal grains are commonly depicted on national symbols, such as flags and coats of arms. They are also featured on a number of state seals. Wisconsin adopted corn as its official [GRAIN?], while other states are nicknamed for grains. For example, Kansas is sometimes called the Wheat State.

Other Plant Parts

Leaves are commonly depicted on flags, arms and seals. The four-leafed clover is a popular good-luck charm.

The Philippines even has an official national leaf, the anahaw.

Whole Plant Symbols

Most “whole plant” symbols are trees. However, official grasses have become somewhat popular, especially among U.S. states. Other states have adopted official shrubs, herbs and “plants.”

Trees

The word tree has little to do with taxonomy, or scientific classification. Trees are simply plants that are really big, just as elephants, whales and dinosaurs are all really big animals.

Most trees belong to one of three very different taxonomic groups—palms, conifers and deciduous trees. Palms generally have enormous leaves and straight or gracefully curved trunks, with no branches. Palms are most common in tropical regions and are often associated with oceanic islands.

Conifers are also known as evergreen trees and include pines, spruces and redwoods. They generally grow straight and are typically pyramid shaped, with all the main branches growing off the central trunk. Conifers don’t produce flowers, but they do produce seeds enclosed in cones that are sometimes called “pine cones.”

Deciduous trees are also known as hardwoods. Unlike palms and conifers, many species shed their leaves in the fall in cooler climates. Hardwoods are generally more rounded in shape than palms or conifers. They have many branches, and the trunk itself may branch into several forks. Hardwoods include oaks, cottonwoods, maples, the tulip poplar, aspen and many more.

Exceptions include the ginkgo and paloverde [???].

Arboreal blossoms and fruits are commonly adopted as symbols. However, many jurisdictions recognize the entire organism with the designation official tree. Mississippi adopted the magnolia twice, as its official tree and flower. Similarly, Texas designated the pecan its state tree, while Alabama proclaimed the pecan its official nut.

Official trees resemble official flowers in that they’re recognized by each of the 50 U.S. states, all of Canada’s provinces and territories, Japan’s prefectures and many nations.

Shrubs

How big does a plant have to be before it’s considered a tree? That’s a good question.

A Minnesota botany manual defines a shrub as, “A woody plant usually less than 20 feet high and generally with several stems from a common base.”

Twenty feet is still more than three times taller than a six-foot man.

Note, also, that a particular species can exist as both a tree and a shrub. Obviously, newly sprouted trees are going to be just inches high. Trees that grow in really harsh environments are sometimes stunted even as adults. Conversely, some shrubs can sometimes grow to enormous sizes under the right circumstances.

Herbs

An herb is an annual, biennial or perennial seed-producing plant that doesn’t develop persistent woody tissue but dies down at the end of a growing season. Most familiar plants that aren’t trees, shrubs or grasses are herbs. However, the only official herb I know of is sweet goldenrod, which was was adopted as Delaware’s official herb. Most states with two official flowers designate the second one the official wildflower.

Grasses

Grasses are even easier to understand than trees. Unlike flowers and trees, they aren’t scattered across the plant kingdom. Rather, the word grass refers to a plant that belongs to the family Poaceae (order Cyperales), and it refers to the whole plant.

Grasses with edible seeds are often grown commercially and are sometimes adopted as symbols. They are often named the “state grain,” a title that refers to the seeds. When someone adopts an official “grass,” they’re usually referring to the entire plant and to a species eaten by domestic livestock. Thus, state grasses are especially common in the Midwest and Western states.

Fungi

Fungi aren’t true plants. However, they’re commonly thought of as plants. Mushrooms are typically sold with vegetables in grocery stores.

Oregon and Minnesota have adopted edible mushrooms as state symbols.

Plant Classification

How do you find information about a certain kind of plant? Obviously, it helps to know the plant’s name. But names can be confusing, as some plants have many different names. They may even share names with other plants.

Knowing a plant’s scientific name is a plus. But some scientific names even change. Therefore, it’s really helpful if you know a little about taxonomy, or plant classification.

For most people, plants are much harder to classify than animals. We all know that the lion is a mammal, and the bald eagle is a bird, but what group does a rose belong to? Here’s a brief summary that will hopefully be of some help.

The diagram on the left begins with five major plant groups. Words in red indicate groups that are not represented among national or state sysmbols. Green type indicates groups that account for just a few symbols.

Primitive plants like horsetails, lycopods and whisk-ferns are of no interest to us here. Ferns (which reproduce by spores, rather than seeds) are barely represented; the silver fern is a symbol of New Zealand.

The seed plants include two more groups that are barely represented as symbols. The ginkgo is a popular symbol in Japan, while cycads are popular symbols of prehistoric life.

So most plant symbols are either conifers (gymnosperms) or flowering plants (angiosperms). Flowering plants are further divided into two main groups, monocots and dicots.

Monocots include palms, grasses, lilies, irises, tulips, orchids, agaves and yuccas, and bananas. Dicots include roses, apples, peaches, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, oaks, maples, daisies, sunflowers, rhododendrons and many, many more plants.

Find that Plant!

GeoSymbols offers information about various symbols from different perspectives. It does this by featuring symbols in as many as four different sections, World, Topics, EcoSymbols and Reference.

For example, suppose you’re interested in reading about the white birch (Betula papyrifera), which has been adopted as a symbol by New Hampshire (United States), Saskatchewan (Canada) and Nagano (Japan). Below are some of the pages that might include information about this symbol of the boreal forest...

Visit the World section for articles about specific symbols, such as New Hampshire’s state tree (the white birch). For more general information about the white birch as a symbol, including any nations or states that might have adopted it, visit the Topics section, especially the Birches page. The Reference section features of lists of symbols, such as national and state trees. The EcoSymbols section simply classifies plants and animals, listing the places where each species or group serves as a symbol but featuring little or no additional information.

Let’s see another example, this one focusing on an entire family of plant, maples (Aceraceae). Let me give you a hint: The sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is regarded as Canada’s national tree and also represents several U.S. states. The Japanese red maple (Acer pycnanthum) represents the Japanese prefecture of Aichi. The Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) is the official tree of three prefectures—Hiroshima, Shiga and Yamanashi—further representing Hiroshima as the official flower.

This time, I omitted the World section because no nation, state or prefecture has designated all maples an official symbol. (If I had chosen oaks instead of maples, then I would have included World > Iowa, because Iowa adopted all oaks as its state tree.)

In this case, the best source of information is probably the article Maples. However, more detailed information could be found in the World section, once you figure out which nations, states, etc. are represented by particular species of maples.

Unfortunately, this project still isn’t finished. However, I have been working on a variety of features that either list only links to pages that are finished or identify which links lead to finished pages.

Related Links