Legislature names Alaska’s official vegetable: Giant cabbage

By SUZANNE DOWNING

May 19, 2026 – As Alaska lawmakers spent the final days of the legislative session locked in bitter fights over the Alaska LNG project, defined benefits, and budget negotiations, they still found time to accomplish one thing with unanimous bipartisan enthusiasm: naming the giant cabbage as Alaska’s official state vegetable.

House Bill 202, sponsored by Rep. DeLena Johnson of Palmer, officially designates the O-S Cross cabbage, commonly known as the giant green cabbage, as the state vegetable after the measure was folded into a larger agriculture bill in the hectic final days of session, which ends on Wednesday.

The bill passed the House 38-0 and the Senate later concurred with the House changes, sending the legislation to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for consideration.

The irony is difficult to avoid.

Johnson, the House minority leader, was simultaneously one of the central figures in the legislative power struggle that contributed to the collapse of this year’s Alaska LNG tax and financing legislation in the final hours of session.

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But while the gasline package died amid procedural chaos, amendments, “at ease” delays, and political maneuvering, the cabbage bill rolled smoothly across the finish line.

At least Alaska now has an official vegetable.

Johnson introduced the measure in April 2025. Similar efforts had surfaced in previous years but never gained enough traction to pass.

This year, however, legislative leaders employed a classic end-of-session maneuver — attaching a popular symbolic bill to a larger piece of legislation that already had momentum.

The cabbage language was inserted into Senate Bill 208, an agriculture and industrial hemp bill dealing primarily with agricultural land leases. By hitching a ride on the broader bill, the cabbage proposal avoided dying in committee as standalone symbolic legislation often does.

The final legislation adds the giant cabbage to Alaska’s growing list of official state symbols, which already includes the willow ptarmigan as state bird, king salmon as state fish, and Sitka spruce as state tree.

In Juneau, perhaps that counts as progress.