State trees of all 50 states

Pines, oaks and maples

Pines dominate the list. Ten states have named a pine, but rarely the same one: Alabama chose the longleaf pine, Maine and Michigan the eastern white pine, Minnesota the red pine, Montana the ponderosa pine, Idaho the western white pine, and Nevada and New Mexico two different piñons, whose nuts have been gathered for food for centuries. Arkansas and North Carolina simply named “the pine.”

Oaks come second. Connecticut, Illinois and Maryland all chose the white oak, New Jersey the northern red oak, Georgia the live oak, and Iowa the oak in general, without naming a species. The sugar maple, the source of maple syrup and blazing fall color, is the single most popular species, shared by New York, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Trees with a story

Some state trees honor one famous tree. Connecticut’s white oak recalls the Charter Oak, where the colony’s royal charter was reportedly hidden in 1687 to keep it from the king’s governor; the old tree blew down in 1856. South Carolina’s palmetto recalls the fort on Sullivan’s Island in 1776, whose walls of palmetto logs soaked up British cannonballs. The palmetto is on the state flag to this day.

Others are tied to food and work. The pecan grows wild along the river valleys of most of Texas, and Texas law still makes it a misdemeanor to knock pecans out of someone else’s tree without written permission. Montana’s ponderosa pine was long cut for railroad ties, telegraph poles and mine timbers.

Chosen slowly

Trees were mostly a mid-century choice. Most states adopted theirs between 1930 and 1959, sometimes long after schoolchildren had voted for it. Colorado children picked the blue spruce in an Arbor Day vote in 1892, but the Legislature made it official only in 1939. Helena schoolchildren chose the ponderosa pine in 1908, and Montana adopted it in 1949. Rhode Island children voted for the red maple in the 1890s; it became the state tree in 1964.

Illinois held two votes. In 1907 and 1908 children chose “the oak” over the maple and the elm, and in 1973 a poll of about 900,000 children narrowed it down to the white oak. Utah’s change came from fourth graders at Monroe Elementary School in Sevier County, who pointed out that the quaking aspen grows in all 29 of the state’s counties. The Legislature replaced the Colorado blue spruce with the aspen in 2014, and the governor signed the bill at their school, using a desk, chair and pens made of aspen.

Find a tree

Click any tree above to see it among the state’s other symbols, with the law that made it official.