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Alabama fired its first state flower. In 1927 the state chose the goldenrod — and lived to regret a choice shared with half the continent and mistaken for a weed. In 1959, after a determined campaign by the camellia growers of Butler County, Alabama traded up: the camellia, the rose of winter, became the Alabama…

For about ten days each May, Michigan’s Lake-shore orchards do something no photograph quite believes: whole hillsides turn white-pink at once, row upon row of apple trees in bloom, with the big lake shining beyond. The apple blossom has been the Michigan state flower since 1897 — one of America’s earliest choices — and it…

Every state flower asks to be seen in daylight — except one. Arizona’s blooms in the dark. On warm nights in May, the tops of giant saguaros open white, waxy flowers like lanterns lit one by one across the desert, courting bats through the night before closing by midday. The saguaro blossom has been the…

In 1892, Washington prepared to send a floral emblem to the great Chicago World’s Fair — and the state did something quietly remarkable: it put the choice to a vote of its women, most of whom could not yet vote for anything. They chose the coast rhododendron, the great evergreen shrub whose pink trusses light…

High in a Colorado meadow, where the air thins and the summer is six weeks long, one flower stops every hiker mid-stride: a sky-blue star on a silver stem, five petals around a golden heart, each petal trailing a long, elegant spur like a comet’s tail. The Colorado blue columbine is the Colorado state flower…

Most state flowers are monuments to beauty. Utah’s is a monument to survival. In the brutal first years of settlement in the Salt Lake Valley — when swarms of crickets stripped the wheat in 1848 and hunger stalked the cabins — the pioneers lived, in part, on a wildflower: the sego lily, whose starchy bulbs…

Some state flowers you have to go looking for. Florida’s announces itself: in spring, whole citrus groves turn white at once and the warm air for miles carries a perfume so rich it has been bottled for centuries. The orange blossom is the Florida state flower — a small, waxy, five-petalled star on the same…

Texas does not do spring subtly. For a few weeks every year, the highways, pastures and cemeteries of the Hill Country and beyond disappear under a blue so deep it looks poured — bluebonnets, millions of them, shoulder to shoulder with red paintbrush and pink primrose. The bluebonnet is not just the Texas state flower;…

Some state flowers were chosen from a greenhouse catalogue. California’s was chosen from its own hillsides — the flower that turned whole valleys gold every spring long before there was a state to name it for. The California poppy is one of the best-loved wildflowers on Earth: a silk-petalled cup of orange-gold that closes at…

Ask ten people to name the Hawaiian flower and nine of them will picture the same thing: a big red hibiscus behind someone’s ear, or a white plumeria in a lei at the airport. Both pictures are true to the Hawaii visitors actually see, and both are wrong about the flower Hawaii itself chose. The…