When does black sage bloom in California?

Most often in April. Across 1,293 dated, research-grade observations of Salvia mellifera in California, the flowering season runs roughly March to June.

Peak April In flower 1,293 Examined 1,760 State California

Flowering 1,293 in flower of 1,760 examined

41%

66%

80%

96%

95%

86%

61%

17%

18%

33%

46%

36%

Proportion of examined Salvia mellifera in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	73	180	41%	34% to 48%
Feb	117	177	66%	59% to 73%
Mar	241	300	80%	75% to 84%
Apr	409	426	96%	94% to 97%
May	270	284	95%	92% to 97%
Jun	67	78	86%	76% to 92%
Jul	33	54	61%	48% to 73%
Aug	6	35	17%	8% to 33%
Sep	7	39	18%	9% to 33%
Oct	13	40	33%	20% to 48%
Nov	19	41	46%	32% to 61%
Dec	38	106	36%	27% to 45%

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Salvia mellifera 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. 1,293 of 1,760 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 Salvia mellifera 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

Salvia mellifera

black sage

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.