When does Coastal Pricklypear bloom in California?

Most often in May. Across 272 dated, research-grade observations of Opuntia littoralis in California, the flowering season runs roughly May to June.

Peak May In flower 272 Examined 1,219 State California

Flowering 272 in flower of 1,219 examined

14%

57%

78%

63%

34%

18%

Proportion of examined Opuntia littoralis in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	5	89	6%	2% to 12%
Feb	6	121	5%	2% to 10%
Mar	19	136	14%	9% to 21%
Apr	31	54	57%	44% to 70%
May	49	63	78%	66% to 86%
Jun	92	147	63%	55% to 70%
Jul	37	110	34%	25% to 43%
Aug	13	71	18%	11% to 29%
Sep	8	145	6%	3% to 11%
Oct	3	90	3%	1% to 9%
Nov	1	98	1%	0% to 6%
Dec	8	95	8%	4% to 16%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Opuntia littoralis 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. 272 of 1,219 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 Opuntia littoralis 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

Opuntia littoralis

Coastal Pricklypear

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.