When does Redstem Stork's-bill bloom in California?

Most often in May. Across 9,210 dated, research-grade observations of Erodium cicutarium in California, the flowering season runs roughly February to August.

Peak May In flower 9,210 Examined 10,617 State California

Flowering 9,210 in flower of 10,617 examined

72%

85%

92%

95%

94%

86%

79%

65%

50%

48%

55%

Proportion of examined Erodium cicutarium in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	478	665	72%	68% to 75%
Feb	1265	1489	85%	83% to 87%
Mar	2791	3044	92%	91% to 93%
Apr	2589	2816	92%	91% to 93%
May	1044	1098	95%	94% to 96%
Jun	387	413	94%	91% to 96%
Jul	119	138	86%	80% to 91%
Aug	75	95	79%	70% to 86%
Sep	77	119	65%	56% to 73%
Oct	76	151	50%	42% to 58%
Nov	112	233	48%	42% to 54%
Dec	197	356	55%	50% to 60%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Erodium cicutarium in California 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. 9,210 of 10,617 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 California found Erodium cicutarium in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in California, 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

Erodium cicutarium

Redstem Stork's-bill

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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