When does mountain laurel bloom in West Virginia?

Most often in June. Across 140 dated, research-grade observations of Kalmia latifolia in West Virginia, the flowering season runs roughly June.

Peak June In flower 140 Examined 271 State West Virginia

Flowering 140 in flower of 271 examined

17%

59%

90%

17%

Proportion of examined Kalmia latifolia in West Virginia in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	1	too few examined
Feb	1	6	17%	3% to 56%
Mar	0	7	0%	0% to 35%
Apr	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
May	54	91	59%	49% to 69%
Jun	81	90	90%	82% to 95%
Jul	3	18	17%	6% to 39%
Aug	1	12	8%	1% to 35%
Sep	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
Oct	0	17	0%	0% to 18%
Nov	0	5	0%	0% to 43%
Dec	0	4	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Kalmia latifolia 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. 140 of 271 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 Kalmia latifolia 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

Kalmia latifolia

mountain laurel

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.