When does woodland strawberry bloom in California?

Most often in March. Across 446 dated, research-grade observations of Fragaria vesca in California, the flowering season runs roughly February to December.

Peak March In flower 446 Examined 639 State California

Flowering 446 in flower of 639 examined

67%

86%

90%

87%

77%

30%

15%

33%

13%

10%

38%

72%

Proportion of examined Fragaria vesca in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	32	48	67%	53% to 78%
Feb	64	74	86%	77% to 92%
Mar	95	106	90%	82% to 94%
Apr	98	113	87%	79% to 92%
May	106	137	77%	70% to 84%
Jun	25	83	30%	21% to 41%
Jul	3	20	15%	5% to 36%
Aug	2	6	33%	10% to 70%
Sep	1	8	13%	2% to 47%
Oct	1	10	10%	2% to 40%
Nov	6	16	38%	18% to 61%
Dec	13	18	72%	49% to 88%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Fragaria vesca 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. 446 of 639 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 Fragaria vesca 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

Fragaria vesca

woodland strawberry

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.