Georgia state symbols

How to read it

The Cherokee rose came first, as Georgia’s official “floral emblem” under a joint resolution of the General Assembly approved by Governor Nathaniel Harris on August 18, 1916. The live oak followed in 1937 (Official Code of Georgia § 50-3-55). Schoolchildren picked the brown thrasher in 1928, but the General Assembly made it the official bird only on March 20, 1970, after a 35-year campaign by The Garden Club of Georgia, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources; it is now in § 50-3-50. The State of Georgia lists the motto with its symbols but gives no date for it. Its nicknames are “The Peach State” and “Empire State of the South”.

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Georgia’s symbols and when each was adopted

Why the Cherokee rose

Georgia College’s Center for Georgia Studies says the Cherokee rose was chosen because it had come to stand for the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia in 1838, on what is now called the Trail of Tears. The flower is waxy white with a large golden centre. The 1916 resolution called the rose “indigenous to its soil”. Inside Climate News reported in April 2026 that the Harvard botanist Asa Gray had written in the mid-19th century that plant explorers found the species growing in China, and that for the second year in a row a bill to replace it as the state flower had fallen short of final passage.