When does Bay cedar bloom in Florida?

Most often in January. Across 139 dated, research-grade observations of Suriana maritima in Florida, the flowering season runs roughly January to March.

Peak January In flower 139 Examined 220 State Florida

Flowering 139 in flower of 220 examined

85%

83%

80%

67%

40%

45%

20%

50%

60%

Proportion of examined Suriana maritima in Florida in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	28	33	85%	69% to 93%
Feb	25	30	83%	66% to 93%
Mar	28	35	80%	64% to 90%
Apr	14	21	67%	45% to 83%
May	6	15	40%	20% to 64%
Jun	5	11	45%	21% to 72%
Jul	0	8	0%	0% to 32%
Aug	1	5	20%	4% to 62%
Sep	0	5	0%	0% to 43%
Oct	4	8	50%	22% to 78%
Nov	7	14	50%	27% to 73%
Dec	21	35	60%	44% to 74%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Suriana maritima in Florida 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. 139 of 220 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 Florida found Suriana maritima in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in Florida, 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

Suriana maritima

Bay cedar

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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