When does Scarlet Hedgehog Cactus bloom in New Mexico?

Most often in May. Across 541 dated, research-grade observations of Echinocereus coccineus in New Mexico, the flowering season runs roughly April to May.

Peak May In flower 541 Examined 697 State New Mexico

Flowering 541 in flower of 697 examined

61%

94%

96%

71%

13%

17%

13%

Proportion of examined Echinocereus coccineus in New Mexico in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	19	0%	0% to 17%
Feb	0	13	0%	0% to 23%
Mar	40	66	61%	49% to 72%
Apr	268	284	94%	91% to 97%
May	196	204	96%	92% to 98%
Jun	32	45	71%	57% to 82%
Jul	0	17	0%	0% to 18%
Aug	1	11	9%	2% to 38%
Sep	2	15	13%	4% to 38%
Oct	1	6	17%	3% to 56%
Nov	1	8	13%	2% to 47%
Dec	0	9	0%	0% to 30%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Echinocereus coccineus in New Mexico 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. 541 of 697 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 New Mexico found Echinocereus coccineus in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in New Mexico, 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

Echinocereus coccineus

Scarlet Hedgehog Cactus

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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