When does mission manzanita bloom in California?

Most often in March. Across 435 dated, research-grade observations of Xylococcus bicolor in California, the flowering season runs roughly January to December.

Peak March In flower 435 Examined 1,021 State California

Flowering 435 in flower of 1,021 examined

62%

60%

66%

29%

15%

10%

51%

23%

57%

Proportion of examined Xylococcus bicolor in California in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	85	137	62%	54% to 70%
Feb	61	102	60%	50% to 69%
Mar	124	188	66%	59% to 72%
Apr	33	115	29%	21% to 38%
May	13	88	15%	9% to 24%
Jun	5	48	10%	5% to 22%
Jul	3	35	9%	3% to 22%
Aug	0	24	0%	0% to 14%
Sep	25	49	51%	37% to 64%
Oct	4	46	9%	3% to 20%
Nov	17	75	23%	15% to 33%
Dec	65	114	57%	48% to 66%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Xylococcus bicolor 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. 435 of 1,021 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 Xylococcus bicolor 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

Xylococcus bicolor

mission manzanita

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.