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Imagine being a Mississippi schoolchild in 1900. You're given a list of 42 flowers and asked a pretty exciting question: Which one should represent your state?
About 23,000 children cast their votes, and nearly 12,000 chose the magnolia. It wasn't even close. You'd think that would be the end of the story. Except Mississippi didn't actually make the magnolia its official state flower. Not that year. Not the next year. In fact, those schoolchildren would have to wait 52 years to see their choice become official.
This short video shares how Mississippi schoolchildren overwhelmingly chose the magnolia in 1900 and why it took more than half a century for their choice to finally become the official state flower.
Southern Magnolia
Southern Magnolia
Magnolia grandiflora
The Southern magnolia is hard to miss.
Its evergreen trees can grow impressively large, with glossy green leaves and enormous creamy-white flowers that can fill the air with fragrance.
A few things that make it special:
Native to the southeastern United States
Produces large, fragrant white flowers
Has thick, sturdy petals
Magnolia ancestors appear in the fossil record tens of millions of years ago
Evolved before bees became major pollinators
That last fact helps explain something unusual about magnolias.
They're primarily adapted for pollination by beetles. Because beetles can crawl around inside a flower and potentially damage delicate parts, magnolias developed unusually tough floral structures.
So that beautiful magnolia blossom is much tougher than it looks.
Why It Became the State Flower
The story begins in 1900 with the Mississippi chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
They decided Mississippi should have a state flower and turned the decision over to the state's schoolchildren.
Students were given 42 different flowers to choose from.
About 23,000 votes were cast.
The magnolia received over 12,000, making it the clear winner.
And then...
Nothing happened.
The magnolia was widely regarded as Mississippi's flower, but the legislature never officially designated it.
The following decades brought enormous events that demanded Mississippi's attention, including World War I, the devastating Mississippi River flood of 1927, the Great Depression, and World War II.
Making a state flower official simply wasn't much of a priority.
But the magnolia never disappeared from Mississippi's identity.
In fact, Mississippi officially adopted the Southern magnolia as its state tree in 1938.
Yes.
Mississippi officially made the magnolia its state tree before it officially made the magnolia its state flower.
Finally, in 1952, the legislature made official what Mississippi's schoolchildren had decided 52 years earlier.
The magnolia became the state flower.
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