SCSouth Carolina State Symbols

South Carolina's defining symbol is the palmetto, and it comes from a single day of fighting. On 28 June 1776 a half-finished fort on Sullivan's Island, built from sand packed between walls of palmetto logs, held off a British fleet trying to take Charleston. The spongy palmetto trunks absorbed cannonballs instead of splintering, the garrison under Colonel William Moultrie kept firing, and the fleet withdrew. The tree went onto the state flag, onto the seal, and into the state's name for itself. Sabal palmetto was made the official state tree in 1939.

Official state symbols

What is on the South Carolina state flag

The flag is an indigo blue field with a white crescent in the upper corner nearest the staff and a white palmetto tree standing in the centre. Both white devices come from the same 1776 campaign. The indigo and the crescent were taken from the uniform of Moultrie's Second South Carolina Regiment: the men wore blue coats and caps carrying a silver crescent, and Moultrie used that pattern for the regimental colour he raised over Sullivan's Island. The palmetto was added in 1861 to commemorate the fort's log walls, producing the design the state still flies.

The crescent is often called a moon, but it is more likely a gorget, the crescent-shaped metal plate worn at the throat on eighteenth-century military uniforms. South Carolina also went more than 150 years without a single legally fixed rendering, so the palmetto's shape and the crescent's tilt varied between manufacturers. A legislative study committee worked through 2020 and 2021 to settle on a standard drawing.

The state seal and the fallen oak

William Henry Drayton designed the seal in 1776, and it is built as two linked ovals, each telling half of the same story. The left oval shows a palmetto tree growing over a fallen oak whose branches are cut off. The oak is the British fleet, whose warships were built of oak, and the palmetto is the fort that beat it. Twelve spears bound to the palmetto's trunk stand for the twelve other states, and a banner reads "Quis Separabit", meaning who shall separate us. The dates of the fort's defence and the state's constitution appear on the shield.

The right oval shows a woman walking along a shore littered with weapons, moving toward a rising sun. She represents Hope, and she is stepping over the debris of the fighting rather than around it. The word "Spes" appears above her and the motto Dum spiro spero runs beneath. The second motto, Animis opibusque parati, arches over the palmetto side.

Symbols that surprise people

• An official state dance. The shag, the slow beach-music partner dance of Myrtle Beach and Ocean Drive, was adopted in 1984.
• An official hospitality beverage. Tea, adopted in 1995. The first tea plants grown commercially in the United States were cultivated near Charleston, and the Charleston Tea Garden on Wadmalaw Island still harvests them.
• A state fossil proposed by a child. Olivia McConnell, aged eight, wrote to her legislators about mammoth teeth dug up on a Carolina plantation in 1725. The Columbian mammoth became the state fossil in 2014, after the bill was nearly derailed by amendments about the creation account.
• A state dog bred for one swamp. The Boykin spaniel, developed near Camden to work from small boats in the Wateree swamps, was named state dog in 1985.
• A state music and a state snack. The spiritual was designated the official state music in 1999, and boiled peanuts became the official state snack food in 2006.
• A state spider. The Carolina wolf spider, adopted in 2000, was proposed by a Sumter County schoolteacher's class.

Symbols of neighbouring states

More about South Carolina