TNTennessee State Symbols

The three white stars on Tennessee's flag are the symbol residents recognize instantly, and they are not there for the order of statehood. They stand for the three grand divisions written into Tennessee law: East Tennessee in the mountains, Middle Tennessee around Nashville, and West Tennessee out to the Mississippi. The nickname works the same way, pointing at a specific event rather than a mood. Tennessee became the Volunteer State because so many of its men enlisted for the War of 1812 and again for the Mexican War, when a call for 2,800 volunteers drew roughly ten times that number.

Official state symbols

Tennessee runs two official flowers because it never really settled the argument. The passion flower won a schoolchildren's vote and became the state flower in 1919, the iris was named state flower in 1933, and in 1973 the legislature ended the dispute by making the passion flower the state wildflower and the iris the state cultivated flower.

What is on the Tennessee state flag

A crimson field carries a blue circle edged in white, and inside it sit three white five-pointed stars arranged so that no one star outranks the others. A vertical blue bar with a narrow white stripe runs down the fly edge. LeRoy Reeves of the Third Regiment, Tennessee Infantry, designed it, and the legislature adopted the flag in 1905. Reeves left a written explanation, which is why the meaning is unusually well documented. The three stars are East, Middle, and West Tennessee. The circle binds them together in what he called indissoluble unity. The blue bar on the fly was purely practical: it makes the flag show color instead of a limp strip of red when there is no wind. Reeves specifically noted that the stars have no connection to Tennessee being the sixteenth state.

The state seal and the motto

The 1796 constitution ordered a state seal but none was actually cut until the early 1800s. The design splits into two halves that supply the state motto. The upper half shows a plow, a sheaf of wheat and a cotton plant above the word AGRICULTURE. The lower half shows a riverboat above the word COMMERCE. The Roman numerals XVI mark Tennessee as the sixteenth state admitted to the Union, and the date 1796 runs across the seal. Because the motto is simply the two words lifted off the seal, Tennessee is one of the few states whose motto has no Latin and no aspiration in it, just the two industries the founders expected to pay the bills.

Symbols that surprise people

• Tennessee has more than a dozen official songs. "The Tennessee Waltz," "Rocky Top," "My Homeland, Tennessee" and "Smoky Mountain Rain" all hold official status.
• One of them is a rap. The legislature adopted a bicentennial rap song in 1996, written for the state's two hundredth anniversary.
• The state gem is a freshwater pearl harvested from mussels in the Tennessee River, adopted in 1979.
• The tomato is the official state fruit, designated in 2003, which quietly settles the botanical argument in Tennessee's favor.
• The state amphibian lives underground. The Tennessee cave salamander is a pale, gilled species found in the limestone cave systems that run under much of the state, and limestone itself is the official state rock.
• The slogan is not the motto. "Tennessee, America at Its Best" was adopted as the official state slogan in 1965 and lives on tourism material, while "Agriculture and Commerce" stays on the seal.

Neighbouring states' symbols

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