When does prickly lettuce bloom in California?

Most often in October. Across 155 dated, research-grade observations of Lactuca serriola in California, the flowering season runs roughly September to October.

Peak October In flower 155 Examined 403 State California

Flowering 155 in flower of 403 examined

10%

21%

45%

68%

77%

91%

57%

33%

Proportion of examined Lactuca serriola in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	12	0%	0% to 24%
Feb	0	7	0%	0% to 35%
Mar	0	23	0%	0% to 14%
Apr	2	46	4%	1% to 15%
May	4	42	10%	4% to 22%
Jun	10	48	21%	12% to 34%
Jul	38	85	45%	35% to 55%
Aug	42	62	68%	55% to 78%
Sep	33	43	77%	62% to 87%
Oct	20	22	91%	72% to 97%
Nov	4	7	57%	25% to 84%
Dec	2	6	33%	10% to 70%

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Lactuca serriola 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. 155 of 403 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 Lactuca serriola 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

Lactuca serriola

prickly lettuce

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.