When does blue palo verde bloom in California?

Most often in April. Across 543 dated, research-grade observations of Parkinsonia florida in California, the flowering season runs roughly April to May.

Peak April In flower 543 Examined 1,627 State California

Flowering 543 in flower of 1,627 examined

13%

38%

78%

68%

38%

30%

13%

14%

17%

Proportion of examined Parkinsonia florida in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	12	252	5%	3% to 8%
Feb	24	188	13%	9% to 18%
Mar	110	293	38%	32% to 43%
Apr	228	294	78%	72% to 82%
May	100	147	68%	60% to 75%
Jun	9	24	38%	21% to 57%
Jul	8	27	30%	16% to 48%
Aug	4	31	13%	5% to 29%
Sep	9	67	13%	7% to 24%
Oct	12	83	14%	8% to 24%
Nov	17	98	17%	11% to 26%
Dec	10	123	8%	4% to 14%

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Parkinsonia florida 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. 543 of 1,627 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 Parkinsonia florida 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

Parkinsonia florida

blue palo verde

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.