When does Carolina horsenettle bloom in Virginia?

Most often in June. Across 248 dated, research-grade observations of Solanum carolinense in Virginia, the flowering season runs roughly May to July.

Peak June In flower 248 Examined 453 State Virginia

Flowering 248 in flower of 453 examined

10%

13%

77%

88%

81%

57%

44%

11%

Proportion of examined Solanum carolinense in Virginia in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	10	0%	0% to 28%
Feb	0	6	0%	0% to 39%
Mar	1	10	10%	2% to 40%
Apr	1	8	13%	2% to 47%
May	20	26	77%	58% to 89%
Jun	100	114	88%	80% to 93%
Jul	55	68	81%	70% to 88%
Aug	39	68	57%	46% to 68%
Sep	28	63	44%	33% to 57%
Oct	4	36	11%	4% to 25%
Nov	0	32	0%	0% to 11%
Dec	0	12	0%	0% to 24%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Solanum carolinense in Virginia 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. 248 of 453 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 Virginia found Solanum carolinense in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in Virginia, 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

Solanum carolinense

Carolina horsenettle

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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