When does salal bloom in Washington?

Most often in June. Across 593 dated, research-grade observations of Gaultheria shallon in Washington, the flowering season runs roughly May to June.

Peak June In flower 593 Examined 1,674 State Washington

Flowering 593 in flower of 1,674 examined

10%

22%

70%

81%

45%

15%

11%

18%

14%

Proportion of examined Gaultheria shallon in Washington in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	7	72	10%	5% to 19%
Feb	1	102	1%	0% to 5%
Mar	2	105	2%	1% to 7%
Apr	34	154	22%	16% to 29%
May	186	267	70%	64% to 75%
Jun	202	250	81%	75% to 85%
Jul	98	218	45%	38% to 52%
Aug	24	165	15%	10% to 21%
Sep	6	110	5%	3% to 11%
Oct	10	94	11%	6% to 18%
Nov	16	87	18%	12% to 28%
Dec	7	50	14%	7% to 26%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Gaultheria shallon in Washington 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. 593 of 1,674 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 Washington found Gaultheria shallon in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in Washington, 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 Washington. 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.