When does garlic mustard bloom in Pennsylvania?

Most often in May. Across 644 dated, research-grade observations of Alliaria petiolata in Pennsylvania, the flowering season runs roughly April to May.

Peak May In flower 644 Examined 1,018 State Pennsylvania

Flowering 644 in flower of 1,018 examined

77%

87%

22%

23%

22%

Proportion of examined Alliaria petiolata in Pennsylvania in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	4	too few examined
Feb	0	12	0%	0% to 24%
Mar	2	85	2%	1% to 8%
Apr	439	568	77%	74% to 81%
May	189	218	87%	82% to 91%
Jun	9	41	22%	12% to 37%
Jul	3	13	23%	8% to 50%
Aug	2	9	22%	6% to 55%
Sep	0	19	0%	0% to 17%
Oct	0	19	0%	0% to 17%
Nov	0	19	0%	0% to 17%
Dec	0	11	0%	0% to 26%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Alliaria petiolata in Pennsylvania observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 644 of 1,018 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.wt38fd.

What this is, and what it is not

This is a record of when people in Pennsylvania found Alliaria petiolata in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in Pennsylvania, so it is not the species’ global average dragged onto a map: the same plant flowers on different dates in different places, and that is the entire point of the page.

It will not tell you what your particular plant will do this year. Bloom time moves with the season, with altitude, and with the weather, and a warm February pulls everything forward. We publish the distribution and the sample size, and we refuse to draw a month that too few people examined.

The plant

Alliaria petiolata

garlic mustard

Sourcesevery claim on this page

GBIF (iNaturalist Research-grade Observations). Dated flowering annotations in Pennsylvania. Every record achieved iNaturalist quality grade Research, which is applied upstream at export. 10.15468/dl.wt38fd. Retrieved 2026-07-14.
World Flora Online Plant List. The accepted name. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.