FLFlorida State Symbols

The orange blossom is Florida's signature symbol, adopted in 1909 when citrus was becoming the state's whole identity. The more interesting thread running through Florida's list, though, is correction. The flag gained a red cross in 1900 so it would stop reading as a flag of surrender, and the seal has been redrawn more than once to remove a mountain range, a coconut palm and a headdress that never belonged here.

Official state symbols

What is on the Florida state flag

Florida flew a plain white flag with the state seal in the middle until 1900. Governor Francis P. Fleming argued that hanging limp on a still day it looked like a white flag of truce. Voters approved the change at the general election in November 1900, adding a red saltire, a diagonal cross running corner to corner, behind the seal. The cross is often linked to the Cross of Burgundy carried by Spanish forces in colonial Florida, though the 1900 argument leaned on the surrender problem rather than heraldry. The seal sits at the center of the cross, sized at half the flag's hoist, and the proportions were written into statute in 1985 when the seal itself was redrawn.

The state seal and its corrections

Florida adopted a seal in 1868, and the version in use since 1985 shows a Seminole woman scattering flowers on a shoreline, the sun rising in a circle of rays over the water, a sabal palm, and a steamboat under way. The original had problems. It showed mountains, which Florida does not have. The palm was a coconut palm rather than the state tree. The woman wore a Plains-style feathered headdress instead of Seminole clothing. Later revisions removed the mountains, and the 1985 redesign swapped in the sabal palm and corrected the dress. The legend around the rim reads Great Seal of the State of Florida, In God We Trust, which is also the motto the legislature made official in 2006.

The Sunshine State nickname ran in tourism advertising for decades before the legislature adopted it officially in 1970, and it has been stamped across Florida license plates ever since. The northern mockingbird, state bird since 1927, is shared with Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, which is why proposals to switch Florida to the scrub-jay, a bird that lives nowhere else on earth, come back to Tallahassee every few years.

Symbols that surprise people

• Moonstone is the state gem, adopted in 1970 to mark the Apollo landings launched from Cape Canaveral. Moonstone is not found in Florida, and none was brought back from the moon either.
• Key lime pie was named the official state pie in 2006.
• Florida names two official state fish, one for each kind of water: the Atlantic sailfish for saltwater and the largemouth bass for fresh, both in 1975.
• Cross and Sword, an outdoor drama about the founding of St. Augustine, was designated the state play in 1973.
• The horse conch, the state shell since 1969, grows up to two feet long and is one of the largest snails in American waters.

Neighboring states' symbols

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