When does downy rattlesnake plantain bloom in West Virginia?

Most often in August. Across 51 dated, research-grade observations of Goodyera pubescens in West Virginia, the flowering season runs roughly July to August.

Peak August In flower 51 Examined 257 State West Virginia

Flowering 51 in flower of 257 examined

50%

52%

Proportion of examined Goodyera pubescens in West Virginia in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	9	0%	0% to 30%
Feb	0	5	0%	0% to 43%
Mar	0	14	0%	0% to 22%
Apr	0	28	0%	0% to 12%
May	0	31	0%	0% to 11%
Jun	0	23	0%	0% to 14%
Jul	24	48	50%	36% to 64%
Aug	27	52	52%	39% to 65%
Sep	0	25	0%	0% to 13%
Oct	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
Nov	0	6	0%	0% to 39%
Dec	0	6	0%	0% to 39%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Goodyera pubescens in West Virginia 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. 51 of 257 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 West Virginia found Goodyera pubescens in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in West Virginia, 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

Goodyera pubescens

downy rattlesnake plantain

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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