When does little nipple cactus bloom in Texas?

Most often in January. Across 112 dated, research-grade observations of Mammillaria heyderi in Texas, the flowering season runs roughly January to April.

Peak January In flower 112 Examined 365 State Texas

Flowering 112 in flower of 365 examined

62%

32%

41%

52%

33%

14%

Proportion of examined Mammillaria heyderi in Texas in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	8	13	62%	36% to 82%
Feb	8	25	32%	17% to 52%
Mar	46	111	41%	33% to 51%
Apr	44	85	52%	41% to 62%
May	5	15	33%	15% to 58%
Jun	0	5	0%	0% to 43%
Jul	0	18	0%	0% to 18%
Aug	1	7	14%	3% to 51%
Sep	0	31	0%	0% to 11%
Oct	0	19	0%	0% to 17%
Nov	0	12	0%	0% to 24%
Dec	0	24	0%	0% to 14%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Mammillaria heyderi in Texas 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. 112 of 365 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 Texas found Mammillaria heyderi in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in Texas, 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

Mammillaria heyderi

little nipple cactus

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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