When does canyon gooseberry bloom in California?

Most often in March. Across 358 dated, research-grade observations of Ribes menziesii in California, the flowering season runs roughly February to April.

Peak March In flower 358 Examined 724 State California

Flowering 358 in flower of 724 examined

47%

70%

87%

74%

34%

29%

Proportion of examined Ribes menziesii in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	16	34	47%	31% to 63%
Feb	75	107	70%	61% to 78%
Mar	135	156	87%	80% to 91%
Apr	104	140	74%	66% to 81%
May	22	64	34%	24% to 47%
Jun	0	37	0%	0% to 9%
Jul	0	33	0%	0% to 10%
Aug	0	40	0%	0% to 9%
Sep	0	51	0%	0% to 7%
Oct	0	26	0%	0% to 13%
Nov	1	19	5%	1% to 25%
Dec	5	17	29%	13% to 53%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Ribes menziesii 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. 358 of 724 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 Ribes menziesii 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

Ribes menziesii

canyon gooseberry

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.