When does salal bloom in California?

Most often in June. Across 423 dated, research-grade observations of Gaultheria shallon in California, the flowering season runs roughly May to June.

Peak June In flower 423 Examined 773 State California

Flowering 423 in flower of 773 examined

50%

44%

42%

65%

80%

82%

47%

15%

12%

18%

35%

29%

Proportion of examined Gaultheria shallon in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	9	18	50%	29% to 71%
Feb	11	25	44%	27% to 63%
Mar	25	59	42%	31% to 55%
Apr	55	84	65%	55% to 75%
May	123	154	80%	73% to 85%
Jun	105	128	82%	74% to 88%
Jul	63	134	47%	39% to 55%
Aug	13	86	15%	9% to 24%
Sep	3	26	12%	4% to 29%
Oct	4	22	18%	7% to 39%
Nov	7	20	35%	18% to 57%
Dec	5	17	29%	13% to 53%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Gaultheria shallon 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. 423 of 773 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 Gaultheria shallon 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

Gaultheria shallon

salal

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.