NCNorth Carolina State Symbols

North Carolina's official symbols

North Carolina's best known symbol is a flag carrying two dates, May 20th 1775 and April 12th 1776, flanking the letters N and C. Those dates are the whole argument the state makes about itself: that North Carolinians moved toward independence early. The Latin motto follows the same modest logic, Esse quam videri, to be rather than to seem. Around that core sits one of the longest symbol lists in the country, covering everything from a hound bred for bear hunting to a carnivorous plant.

What is on the North Carolina state flag

The hoist carries a vertical blue union with a single white five-pointed star in the middle. To the left of the star is a gilt N, to the right a gilt C. Above and below the star run gilt scrolls: the upper one reads May 20th 1775, the lower April 12th 1776. The rest of the flag is two horizontal bars of equal width, red on top and white below.

The two dates are the point of the design. May 20th 1775 is the disputed Mecklenburg Declaration, said to have been signed in Charlotte more than a year before the national Declaration of Independence. April 12th 1776 is the Halifax Resolves, the resolution by which North Carolina's provincial congress authorised its delegates in Philadelphia to vote for independence, the first such instruction from any colony. The current flag dates to 1885, when the legislature revised a Confederate era design that had carried a secession date, replacing it with the Halifax date.

The state seal

The seal shows two figures, Liberty standing on the left with a pole and cap in one hand and a scroll marked Constitution in the other, and Plenty seated on the right holding a horn spilling grain and fruit. The date May 20, 1775 appears above them and the motto below. A 1983 revision added a coastal plain, a three-masted ship and mountains in the background so the seal reads from the Outer Banks to the Blue Ridge. The motto, taken from Cicero's essay on friendship, was adopted in 1893, making North Carolina one of the last states to settle on one.

Symbols that surprise people

• A state shell before anyone else had one. The Scotch bonnet, a ridged sea snail common on the Outer Banks, was adopted in 1965 and was the first official state shell in the country.
• A hound bred in the mountains. The Plott hound, named state dog in 1989, was developed by the Plott family in western North Carolina for hunting bear and boar, and is one of the few breeds created in the United States.
• An official carnivorous plant. The Venus flytrap, adopted in 2005, grows wild in a narrow band of wet pine savanna around Wilmington and almost nowhere else on earth.
• A shark tooth fossil. The fossilised tooth of the megalodon, dug from coastal plain riverbeds, became the state fossil in 2013.
• Two official dances. The shag, danced to beach music on the coast, was named the popular dance in 1985; clogging, from the mountains, was named the folk dance in 2005.

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