When does red trillium bloom in North Carolina?

Most often in April. Across 909 dated, research-grade observations of Trillium erectum in North Carolina, the flowering season runs roughly March to May.

Peak April In flower 909 Examined 1,011 State North Carolina

Flowering 909 in flower of 1,011 examined

94%

96%

20%

Proportion of examined Trillium erectum in North Carolina in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	17	18	94%	74% to 99%
Apr	556	578	96%	94% to 97%
May	328	342	96%	93% to 98%
Jun	8	40	20%	11% to 35%
Jul	0	13	0%	0% to 23%
Aug	0	18	0%	0% to 18%
Sep	0	2	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Trillium erectum in North Carolina 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. 909 of 1,011 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 North Carolina found Trillium erectum in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in North Carolina, 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

Trillium erectum

red trillium

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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