The Ohio state flower is the scarlet carnation — and unlike most state symbols, it was not chosen for how it looks or where it grows. Ohio picked it as a memorial. The scarlet carnation was the favorite flower of President William McKinley, an Ohioan who wore one in his lapel for luck throughout his career and was assassinated in 1901. Three years later, the Ohio General Assembly adopted his flower as the state’s own, in the statute’s words, “as a token of love and reverence for the memory of William McKinley.” Behind that short law is a genuinely good story involving a political rivalry, a greenhouse in Alliance, Ohio, and a good-luck charm that lasted twenty-five years.
Ohio State Flower: The Quick Facts
- Flower: Scarlet carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus)
- Adopted: February 3, 1904, by joint resolution of the Ohio General Assembly
- Honors: President William McKinley of Ohio, assassinated in 1901
- In law: Ohio Revised Code Section 5.02
- Key figure: Dr. Levi Lamborn of Alliance, who bred the “Lamborn Red” carnation
- Carnation City: Alliance, Ohio, officially named in 1959
- Not the wildflower: Ohio’s official state wildflower is a different plant — the white trillium
Why a Carnation? The McKinley Good-Luck Charm
The story starts with an election McKinley nearly treated as a friendly sporting contest. In 1876, the young William McKinley ran for Congress from Ohio’s 18th district against Dr. Levi Leslie Lamborn of Alliance — a physician, politician, and passionate amateur horticulturist who had been propagating carnations from French seedlings in his Alliance greenhouses since 1866, when almost nobody in America was growing them. Lamborn had bred a rich scarlet variety he proudly called “Lamborn Red.”
Before their debates, Lamborn presented his opponent with a scarlet carnation boutonniere. McKinley won the seat — and, being a man who noticed omens, decided the flower had something to do with it. From that campaign onward, the red carnation became his signature. He wore one in his lapel through his years in Congress, his two terms as governor of Ohio, and his presidency. At the White House he kept carnations in a vase on his desk and handed them out to visitors, so reliably that the flower became visually attached to him the way a logo attaches to a brand.
The ending of the story is the part Ohioans still tell quietly. On September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, McKinley reportedly took the carnation from his lapel during a public reception and gave it to a young girl in the receiving line. Moments later, he was shot by assassin Leon Czolgosz. McKinley died eight days later, on September 14, 1901. Whether or not the unlucky detail is perfectly documented, it cemented the carnation in the public mind as his flower — and made what happened next feel inevitable.
How the Scarlet Carnation Became the Ohio State Flower
After the assassination, the florist trade and admirers promoted wearing red carnations each year on McKinley’s birthday, January 29 — a movement formalized by the Carnation League of America, founded in 1903. Dr. Lamborn, by then elderly, had spent years suggesting the flower deserved official recognition. On February 3, 1904, the Ohio General Assembly passed a joint resolution naming the scarlet carnation the state flower, expressly in McKinley’s memory.
The designation lives today in the Ohio Revised Code. Ohio Revised Code Section 5.02 reads, in full: “The scarlet carnation is hereby adopted as the state flower as a token of love and reverence for the memory of William McKinley.” One sentence — among the shortest and most sentimental statutes in the code, sitting in the same chapter as the state flag, seal, and other official symbols. If you enjoy this kind of official-symbol trivia, Ohio’s state animal has its own story too: see how the Ohio state animal, the white-tailed deer, earned its designation six decades later.
Alliance, Ohio: The Carnation City
If the state flower has a hometown, it is Alliance in Stark County, where Lamborn grew his seedlings. Ohio made it official in 1959, when the General Assembly named Alliance “the Carnation City.” The city leans into the title: the Greater Alliance Carnation Festival, held each August, runs for days with parades, pageants, and carnations everywhere, and it is one of the signature small-city festivals in northeast Ohio.
Columbus honors the connection differently. Outside the Ohio Statehouse stands a lifelike statue of McKinley, and each year on his birthday, January 29, scarlet carnations are placed in the statue’s carved hands — a small ceremony sometimes called Red Carnation Day. It is a short walk from the law that started all of it: the state flower statute was enacted a few hundred feet from where the flowers are placed.
Scarlet Carnation vs. Other Ohio Flowers People Confuse It With
Two mix-ups come up constantly:
- The white trillium is Ohio’s official wildflower, designated in the 1980s — a different title from state flower. The large white trillium blooms in Ohio woods each spring and is protected in the sense that picking wild populations is strongly discouraged. If a question asks for the state flower, the answer is still the scarlet carnation.
- The buckeye is Ohio’s state tree — and the source of the state’s nickname — not its flower. The Ohio buckeye’s blossoms are pretty, but they have no official floral title.
Growing Scarlet Carnations in Ohio
Part of the charm of Ohio’s choice is that the flower is growable here — Lamborn proved that in an Alliance greenhouse in the 1860s. Garden carnations (Dianthus caryophyllus) are typically grown as annuals or short-lived perennials in Ohio’s climate. For the best shot at McKinley-worthy scarlet blooms:
- Sun and soil: Full sun and well-drained, slightly alkaline soil. Carnations rot in soggy ground, so raised beds or containers suit Ohio clay well.
- Timing: Start seeds indoors six to eight weeks before the last frost, or buy transplants after frost danger passes in spring.
- Care: Deadhead spent blooms to keep flowers coming, stake tall stems, and water at the base rather than overhead to avoid fungal problems in humid Ohio summers.
- Cut flowers: Carnations are famously long-lasting in a vase — one reason florists loved them, and presumably one reason a politician who handed them out daily did too.
The Man Behind the Flower: Dr. Levi Lamborn
Levi Leslie Lamborn (1827–1910) deserves his own paragraph in Ohio history, because the state flower was not a spontaneous gesture by legislators — it was the end of one man’s forty-year project. Lamborn arrived in Alliance as a physician, served in public life, and became one of the earliest serious carnation growers in the United States. In 1866, when carnations were a rarity in American gardens, he obtained six potted carnation plants grown from French seedlings and began propagating them in his Alliance greenhouses. From those plants he developed his scarlet strain, “Lamborn Red,” and spent decades promoting the flower — writing on carnation culture, exhibiting blooms, and quietly lobbying for the recognition that finally came in 1904, six years before his death.
That timeline matters for understanding the 1876 debate story. When Lamborn handed McKinley a boutonniere before their debates, it was not a random courtesy between rivals; it was a breeder showing off the flower he had spent a decade creating. When McKinley adopted it as his lucky charm, Lamborn’s cultivar acquired the most famous lapel in America. After the assassination, the old doctor was among those who pushed hardest for the official designation — and unlike many political memorials, this one named the flower he had bred, in the color he had bred it.
Red Carnation Day and the Traditions That Survive
Ohio’s flower is one of the few state symbols with a living ritual attached. Every January 29 — McKinley’s birthday — red carnations are placed in the hands of his statue at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, a custom the Statehouse marks as Red Carnation Day. The tradition echoes an earlier national one: in the years right after 1901, the Carnation League of America urged Americans everywhere to wear a red carnation on January 29 in McKinley’s memory, and the custom was widely observed before fading after the First World War era.
In Alliance, the connection runs deeper and lasts longer. Beyond the Carnation Festival each August, the city weaves the flower into its identity year-round — it is in the nickname the legislature granted in 1959, in local business names, and in the historical marker standing near the site of Lamborn’s greenhouses, placed there in 2004 for the adoption’s centennial. Visitors who want the full story in one stop can pair Alliance with Canton, twenty minutes away, where the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum preserves the other half of the story: the president himself.
Why Ohio Chose a Memorial Instead of a Wildflower
Most states picked state flowers the ordinary way — a popular vote, a schoolchildren’s campaign, a bloom that blankets the landscape. Ohio’s process was different, and it explains the odd detail that the state’s flower is a cultivated garden hybrid rather than a native plant. The scarlet carnation does not grow wild in Ohio meadows; it was chosen the way a portrait is chosen, to resemble someone. That is also why the General Assembly eventually needed a second designation: when Ohio later wanted to honor its actual native flora, it added the white trillium as the official state wildflower, leaving the carnation’s memorial title untouched.
There is something fitting in the arrangement. The buckeye tree gives Ohio its nickname and its swagger; the trillium represents the woods Ohioans actually walk in; and the scarlet carnation stands for memory — a specific man, a specific lapel, and a state that decided in 1904 that gratitude was reason enough to write a flower into law.
Why Scarlet, Specifically?
The color was the point, and Lamborn’s breeding made it possible. In the traditional language of flowers, red carnations carry the meaning of deep love and admiration — which maps almost word-for-word onto the statute’s stated purpose, “a token of love and reverence.” A pink or white carnation would have read as a different sentiment entirely: gratitude, or pure remembrance of a sadder kind. The scarlet of the Lamborn Red was vivid, public, and proud rather than mournful — the flower of a campaign buttonhole, not a funeral wreath. That is why Ohio’s law does not simply name “the carnation.” It names the scarlet carnation, and florists honoring the designation today still reach for the deepest red blooms they can find, exactly as Lamborn grew them and McKinley wore them.
The Bottom Line
The Ohio state flower is the scarlet carnation, adopted on February 3, 1904, and preserved in Ohio Revised Code Section 5.02 as a living memorial to President William McKinley. It earned the title through a story no committee could have invented: bred by a rival candidate in Alliance, adopted as a good-luck charm in 1876, worn through a governorship and a presidency, and laid down, legend says, moments before an assassin’s bullet. Ohio has flashier symbols, but it does not have a better story than this one.
