When does pointleaf manzanita bloom in Arizona?

Most often in March. Across 521 dated, research-grade observations of Arctostaphylos pungens in Arizona, the flowering season runs roughly March.

Peak March In flower 521 Examined 1,234 State Arizona

Flowering 521 in flower of 1,234 examined

47%

68%

90%

61%

20%

Proportion of examined Arctostaphylos pungens in Arizona in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	28	60	47%	35% to 59%
Feb	113	166	68%	61% to 75%
Mar	227	252	90%	86% to 93%
Apr	125	204	61%	54% to 68%
May	20	99	20%	13% to 29%
Jun	0	67	0%	0% to 5%
Jul	0	90	0%	0% to 4%
Aug	7	119	6%	3% to 12%
Sep	1	80	1%	0% to 7%
Oct	0	43	0%	0% to 8%
Nov	0	28	0%	0% to 12%
Dec	0	26	0%	0% to 13%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Arctostaphylos pungens in Arizona 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. 521 of 1,234 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 Arizona found Arctostaphylos pungens in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in Arizona, 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

Arctostaphylos pungens

pointleaf manzanita

Sourcesevery claim on this page

GBIF (iNaturalist Research-grade Observations). Dated flowering annotations in Arizona. 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.