TXTexas State Symbols

The single star that gives Texas its nickname predates statehood. It flew over the Republic of Texas from 1839, when the independent republic adopted the flag Texans still use, and it stood for a nation with no allies to share a canton with. The state motto has a similar origin buried in language rather than politics: "Friendship" is a translation of tejas, the Caddo word for friends or allies that Spanish explorers applied to the people they met here and then to the land itself.

Official state symbols

The 1901 flower vote was a real fight. One faction wanted the cotton boll for the economy it built, another pushed the prickly pear cactus bloom, and the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in Texas carried a painting of bluebonnets into the chamber and won the room. In 1971 the legislature broadened the law to cover every bluebonnet species growing in Texas, so no future botanist could disqualify the winner on a technicality.

What is on the Texas state flag

A vertical blue stripe covers the hoist third and carries one white five-pointed star at its center. The fly is split into two horizontal bars, white above and red below. The blue stands for loyalty, the white for purity or strength, and the red for bravery. The single star represents all of Texas standing as one, which is the same meaning it carried on the flag of the Republic when the Texan congress adopted this design in January 1839. It stayed in use through annexation in 1845 and was re-enacted by statute in 1933. One thing that gets repeated and is not true: Texas is not the only state permitted to fly its flag at the same height as the United States flag. Any state may, provided the flags are on separate poles.

The state seal and its reverse

The obverse is spare: a five-pointed star framed by a live oak branch on one side, for strength, and an olive branch on the other, for peace, circled by the words "The State of Texas." The reverse went unused for more than a century until the legislature specified one in 1961. It shows a shield bearing the Alamo, the cannon of the Battle of Gonzales that carried the "Come and Take It" banner, and Vince's Bridge, which Texan forces destroyed before San Jacinto to cut off retreat. Above it runs the motto "Remember the Alamo," and around it fly the six flags of the nations that have governed Texas.

Symbols that surprise people

• Texas has three official mammals, split by category: the longhorn as large mammal, the armadillo as small mammal, and the Mexican free-tailed bat as flying mammal, all named in 1995.
• The state footwear is the cowboy boot, adopted in 2007, and the state dance is the square dance.
• There is an official gemstone cut. The Lone Star Cut, a star-shaped faceting pattern for Texas blue topaz, is written into law alongside the gem itself.
• Two peppers are official. The jalapeño is the state pepper and the chiltepin, a tiny wild bird pepper of South Texas, is the state native pepper.
• Pan de campo is the state bread, the flat camp bread that ranch cooks and vaqueros baked in a covered skillet over coals.
• The state dinosaur has changed names twice as paleontologists reclassified the sauropod bones from the Paluxy River country near Glen Rose.

Neighbouring states' symbols

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