North Dakota state symbols

How to read it

Chapter 54-02 of the North Dakota Century Code names the bird as “the meadowlark, sturnella neglecta”, the floral emblem as “the wild prairie rose, rosa blanda or arkansana” and the tree as “the American elm, ulmus americana”. The State Historical Society gives the years: the wild prairie rose in 1907, and the western meadowlark and the American elm in 1947. Prairie Public’s Dakota Datebook dates the rose bill to March 7, 1907, and the meadowlark to the 1947 legislature. The motto is part of the great seal described in Article XI of the constitution, which surrounds the seal with “Liberty and Union Now and Forever, One and Inseparable” and dates it October 1st, 1889. The official nickname, adopted in 1957, is the Peace Garden State.

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A second motto, in Latin

Since 2011 North Dakota also has a state Latin motto. House Bill 1346, approved on April 8, 2011, added “Serit ut alteri saeclo prosit” to the code, with the English translation “One sows for the benefit of another age”. The constitution’s English motto on the seal was left as it was.

States with the same bird

The western meadowlark is also the state bird of Nebraska, Oregon and Wyoming. The code’s Sturnella neglecta is the same bird the Oregon Blue Book names.