Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Oh, my goodness, in days past our South Carolina legislature was filled with gifted orators who could not doubt make even an insult sounds flattering. But when praise was intended, their words become ethereal. The senators and representatives of those times were mainly from rural areas and well acquainted with yellow jessamine.
When In 1924, the following beautiful and lofty language was drafted to justify choosing yellow jessamine as our state flower they wrote, "...it is indigenous to every nook and corner of the State; it is the first premonitor of coming Spring; its fragrance greets us first in the woodland and its delicate flower suggests the pureness of gold; and its perpetual return out of the dead of Winter suggests the lesson of constancy in, loyalty to, and patriotism in the service of the State."