When does ocotillo bloom in California?

Most often in April. Across 1,898 dated, research-grade observations of Fouquieria splendens in California, the flowering season runs roughly April to May.

Peak April In flower 1,898 Examined 4,627 State California

Flowering 1,898 in flower of 4,627 examined

17%

33%

56%

83%

73%

13%

11%

19%

24%

30%

Proportion of examined Fouquieria splendens in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	117	675	17%	15% to 20%
Feb	271	814	33%	30% to 37%
Mar	670	1187	56%	54% to 59%
Apr	438	527	83%	80% to 86%
May	112	154	73%	65% to 79%
Jun	5	38	13%	6% to 27%
Jul	1	17	6%	1% to 27%
Aug	0	38	0%	0% to 9%
Sep	12	112	11%	6% to 18%
Oct	47	246	19%	15% to 24%
Nov	93	386	24%	20% to 29%
Dec	132	433	30%	26% to 35%

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Fouquieria splendens 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. 1,898 of 4,627 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 Fouquieria splendens 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

Fouquieria splendens

ocotillo

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.