Colorado state symbols

How to read it

The columbine came first: an act of the General Assembly made the white and lavender columbine (Aquilegia caerulea) the state flower on April 4, 1899. The lark bunting followed on April 29, 1931, and is now in Colorado Revised Statutes § 24-80-910; the male is black with snowy white wing patches and turns grey-brown like the female in winter. The blue spruce (Picea pungens) was adopted on March 7, 1939 by a resolution, House Joint Resolution 7, so it has no section in the Revised Statutes. The motto is written into the law that describes the state seal, first passed in an act approved on March 15, 1877, and is the phrase on the seal’s ribbon. The State Archives also gives the nickname “Centennial State”, because Colorado became a state 100 years after the Declaration of Independence.

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Colorado’s symbols and when each was adopted

Schoolchildren picked the spruce in 1892

Colorado schoolchildren voted on Arbor Day in 1892 to name the blue spruce the state tree, the State Archives says, but it wasn’t made official until the 1939 resolution.

The law on picking columbines

In 1925 the General Assembly made it the duty of all citizens to protect the columbine from needless destruction or waste. Under § 24-80-907 it is unlawful to tear it up by the roots on public land or a public highway, to pick more than 25 stems, buds or blossoms there in one day, or to pick it on private land without the owner’s consent.