SPORTS

Here's a proposal for a new Minnesota state flag design

Stephen Saupe
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
Stephen Saupe

There’s not much to celebrate in Minnesota on Flag Day.

The Minnesota flag is ranked as one of the 10 worst state flags by the North American Vexillological Association. This group, which is dedicated to the academic study of flags, gives particularly low ratings to flags like ours that look like a “state seal on a bedsheet.”

From a botanical perspective, the Minnesota state flag is definitely a loser.

A tree stump and a farmer tilling a virgin prairie are prominently featured. There must be a better way to represent the importance of forestry and agriculture, without emphasizing the destruction wrought by these industries.

On the positive side, the Minnesota state flag also includes a wreath of showy lady’s slipper orchids, our state flower. Coincidentally, they bloom about Flag Day, June 14.

There have been various proposals for a new Minnesota flag. It’s time that we adopt a more appropriate, and preferably plant-themed, design.

There are lots of beautiful flags with a botanical motif that we can use as a model. The Canadian flag with its maple leaf and the South Carolina state flag featuring a palmetto are my favorites.

Although we wouldn’t go wrong by elevating the showy lady’s slipper to a central position on the flag, my design for a new Minnesota flag would feature trembling aspen.

This tree, which is also called quaking aspen or popple, is the perfect choice to adorn any flag. That’s because its leaves behave more like a flag than any other plant — the leaves flutter, or quake, in the wind.

The reason this occurs is because the leaf stalk is not round as it is in most plants. Rather, it is flattened in a direction parallel to the main stem.  As a result, even the slightest breeze causes the leaves to wobble side-to-side, flag-like, along their central axis.

Second, trembling aspen is the most abundant tree in Minnesota. With the exception of a few counties in the southwest corner of the state, it grows throughout the state. From this perspective, it symbolically unites the diversity of people and habitats throughout the state.

Finally, trembling aspen has the tendency to send up sucker shoots from the root system. A single tree can quickly colonize a large area.  This ability is reminiscent of the settlers who arrived in the 1800s and rapidly spread throughout Minnesota.

Clearcutting and burning the debris, which are traditional forest harvesting practices, stimulate the formation of aspen sucker shoots.   Consequently, as Welby Smith notes in his outstanding book "Trees and Shrubs of Minnesota," “the vast expanses of trembling aspen seen in northern Minnesota today are the legacy of pine logging a century ago.”

Let’s put trembling aspen on our Minnesota state flag. It would be a much more appropriate symbol to represent the history and importance of forestry in the state than a pine stump. Now, that would be something to celebrate.

This is the opinion of Stephen G. Saupe, a professor in the biology department of the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University and director of the CSB/SJU Bailey Herbarium and Melancon Greenhouse. He can be reached at newsroom@stcloudtimes.com.