When does great mullein bloom in Minnesota?

Most often in July. Across 182 dated, research-grade observations of Verbascum thapsus in Minnesota, the flowering season runs roughly July.

Peak July In flower 182 Examined 700 State Minnesota

Flowering 182 in flower of 700 examined

Proportion of examined Verbascum thapsus in Minnesota in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 7 0% 0% to 35%
Feb 0 12 0% 0% to 24%
Mar 0 49 0% 0% to 7%
Apr 0 100 0% 0% to 4%
May 0 55 0% 0% to 7%
Jun 28 98 29% 21% to 38%
Jul 90 119 76% 67% to 82%
Aug 32 69 46% 35% to 58%
Sep 13 53 25% 15% to 38%
Oct 17 90 19% 12% to 28%
Nov 2 42 5% 1% to 16%
Dec 0 6 0% 0% to 39%

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Verbascum thapsus in Minnesota 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. 182 of 700 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 Minnesota found Verbascum thapsus in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in Minnesota, 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

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. GBIF (iNaturalist Research-grade Observations). Dated flowering annotations in Minnesota. Every record achieved iNaturalist quality grade Research, which is applied upstream at export. 10.15468/dl.wt38fd. Retrieved 2026-07-14.
  2. World Flora Online Plant List. The accepted name. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.