Checked daily · 2027 spring season

Spring Bloom 2027: When Wildflowers Peak, State by State

Q: Which states have a spring bloom page?

The 14 states with a signature spring bloom that an institution publishes timing for, and that USA-NPN's Spring Index grid covers. Alaska and Hawaii are outside the grid entirely, and the reason is on this page. The remaining states have no institutionally sourced signature bloom yet.

An almanac date cannot tell you about the spring you are actually in, and a national spring index cannot tell you where the bluebonnets are. This puts the two together: a sourced bloom window for each state's signature flowers, shifted by how early or late spring has run there so far this year.

States covered

each with a sourced signature bloom

Bloom windows

every one attributed to its publisher

Louisiana

First to bloom

index normally fires Feb 22

Maine

Last to bloom

index normally fires May 25

Your answer in five seconds

Is spring early or late where you are?

Enter a ZIP and this reads USA-NPN's Spring Index grid at that point, live, in your browser. It reports how many days ahead of or behind the 1991 to 2020 normal spring has run there so far this year. Northern ZIPs return nothing until roughly April, because the index requirement has not been met at that pixel yet, and the tool reports that rather than a zero.

South to north

The order spring arrives in

These are the 30-year normal dates on which USA-NPN's First Bloom Index fires at each state's reference points, which is as close to an objective spine for "when is spring" as exists. The spread from Louisiana to Maine is about 92 days. Individual flowers do not follow the index exactly, which is why each state page matches its species to the index that fits that species rather than to this one.

State	First leaf	First bloom	Late bloom	Signature species
Louisiana	Jan 27	Feb 22	Apr 8	Azalea
Texas	Feb 3	Mar 5	Apr 20	Texas bluebonnet
Mississippi	Feb 7	Mar 10	Apr 23	Flowering dogwood and eastern redbud
Alabama	Feb 7	Mar 11	Apr 24	Azalea
Georgia	Feb 14	Mar 20	May 3	Yoshino cherry
Oklahoma	Feb 21	Mar 25	May 6	Eastern redbud
Arkansas	Feb 22	Mar 27	May 8	Flowering dogwood
Rhode Island	Apr 1	May 4	Jun 8	Daffodil
Connecticut	Apr 8	May 8	Jun 11	Mountain laurel
Massachusetts	Apr 6	May 9	Jun 12	Lilac
New York	Apr 10	May 10	Jun 11	Lilac
New Hampshire	Apr 17	May 16	Jun 17	Purple lilac
Vermont	Apr 19	May 17	Jun 17	Apple blossom
Maine	Apr 25	May 25	Jun 26	Bigleaf lupine

Normal day of year on which each Extended Spring Index is met, averaged over the state's three reference points, from the 1991 to 2020 baseline grid. Source: USA National Phenology Network.

What each state is known for

The blooms people actually travel for

14 of the 14 states have one bloom that dominates the question, and 3 have a named annual event built around it. Those are the pages worth reading before you book anything.

A dense field of blue bluebonnet flowers stretching to a line of trees under an open sky — Texas bluebonnets, the most searched spring bloom in the country. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center puts peak in early April, and is careful to separate that from how thick the display will be, which depends on the previous autumn and winter rain. “Austin, United States (Unsplash YPLx5eOy49M)” — Roberta Guillen robertaguillen — CC0

February and March

The desert Southwest and the Gulf run first. Big Bend bluebonnets open in February, six weeks and four hundred miles away from the Hill Country bloom people mean when they say bluebonnets. Louisiana and the lower South are into their first bloom index before most of the country has thawed.

April

The heaviest month. Texas Hill Country peaks, redbud and dogwood move up through the Southeast, and the California poppy display is on if the winter rain arrived. Most named wildflower festivals sit here.

May

The Northeast and the Great Lakes take over. Lilac, trillium and orchard bloom run through the month, and the first bloom index does not fire in northern New England until the middle of it.

June and July

Alpine and far northern displays only. By the time Rocky Mountain tundra flowers open, the South has been finished for three months. This is why a single national bloom date is meaningless.

How this works

Two halves, and why neither works alone

The researched half. For each state, the flowers it is known for and the institution that publishes when they bloom, quoted on the page. Those windows are climatological typicals. They do not know what this particular year has done.

The measured half. USA-NPN's Extended Spring Indices are mathematical models that predict the start of spring at a particular location, run daily on a 4 km grid over the lower 48. Comparing this year against the 30-year normal gives an anomaly in days. That number is real, current and specific to your location, and almost nothing consumer-facing surfaces it.

Together. A typical peak date shifted by a measured anomaly is a better answer than either half. Neither is a forecast, and the shift is only applied in the half of the year when the anomaly refers to the spring ahead. Right now the pages are in retrospective mode, reporting the 2026 spring as it finished.

Dense panicles of white lilac flowers in full bloom on a sunlit shrub — The indices are built on cloned lilacs and honeysuckles, planted so that the same genetics respond to climate in every location. That is what makes the model comparable across the country, and also what makes it species-agnostic: it is a measure of spring itself rather than of any flower you would drive to see. “2018-05-13 (139) Syringa vulgaris (common lilac) at Bichlhäusl in Frankenfels, Austria” by GT1976, CC BY-SA 4.0

Coverage

States without a page

Two states are outside the Spring Index model entirely.

Alaska. USA-NPN publishes current-year Spring Index layers for Alaska but no anomaly layer and no 30-year mean, so there is no normal to measure this spring against and no shift to apply.
Hawaii. The Extended Spring Indices are a conterminous United States product and a point query over the islands returns no data at all. The models describe a temperate spring driven by accumulated warmth after a cold winter, which is not how the Hawaiian growing year works.

Yellow brittlebush flowering across a desert slope below red cliffs — Desert wildflower displays are the clearest case of timing and abundance being different questions. The Spring Index will tell you the desert warmed early. Whether there is anything to see depends on rain that fell months before. “Sonoran Spring Yellow, McDowell Mountains, Arizona (marcegottlieb wikimedia)” by MarcEGottlieb, CC BY-SA 4.0

Researched species

Species without a published window

Each of these is a flower a state is genuinely known for, with no citable institution putting months on it, so it carries no window here. A citable source for any of them belongs on the page.

Hill Country mixed wildflower complex (Texas). Texas Parks and Wildlife names the species and the parks in its spring release but states no months anywhere on the page.
Southern magnolia (Louisiana). The state flower, but no source found putting months on it, and in any case it is a late spring to early summer bloom rather than a travel bloom.
Southern Indica azaleas (Mississippi). The thing Natchez is famous for. Mississippi State Extension covers the genus but never puts a month on this group's peak.
Flowering dogwood (Georgia). University of Georgia Extension Bulletin C900 describes the tree and its habitat in detail and gives no bloom months.
Wild lowbush blueberry (Maine). University of Maine Extension publishes a live phenology tracker but its explicit bloom dates are in PDF documents rather than on a quotable page.
Apple blossom (New Hampshire). UNH Extension covers apple bloom in a PDF document; no quotable UNH page carries a bloom date.
Shadbush (Massachusetts). Well attested regionally on native plant sites, absent from any state agency, extension or park service page found.
Common blue violet (Rhode Island). The state flower. Its April to May window appears on symbol reference sites and on no Rhode Island DEM, URI Extension or wild plant society page.
Apple blossom (New York). Cornell runs two fruit programmes covering the Hudson Valley and the Lake Ontario belt and neither publishes a bloom normal.

A single white trillium flower above three broad green leaves on a forest floor of brown leaf litter — Trillium is one of the better documented spring ephemerals, which is why it made the cut in the Midwest and Northeast. Many equally beloved wildflowers have no agency publishing a bloom window at all. “Trillium grandiflorum, 2020-05-03, Trillium Trail, 01” — Cbaile19 — CC0

Every state page

Spring bloom by state

Questions

Spring bloom, answered

Is spring running early or late this year?

It depends where you are, and that is the point. USA-NPN's Extended Spring Indices are 4 km gridded models regenerated every day from PRISM temperature data, and they give a different answer for every pixel in the lower 48. Each state page on this site reads that grid at three reference points in the state and averages them. In USA-NPN's own words, to determine how the current spring compares to normal they difference the day of year the leaf out or bloom was reached this year from the long-term average day of year it was met. The baseline is the 1991 to 2020 average.

Is this a forecast?

No. Every layer in the USA-NPN Spring Index suite stops at today; none is forward dated. The Spring Index anomaly measures the spring that has already run so far this year, which makes it a leading indicator for the blooms still ahead of you rather than a prediction of them. It is genuinely useful in March, when the leaf index already knows something and peak bloom is still five weeks out. It is not useful in October, so from August through December these pages stop shifting dates and report the spring just finished instead.

Why are there three different Spring Indices?

Because spring is not one event. USA-NPN publishes First Leaf, which is based on the leaf out of lilacs and honeysuckles, among the first plants to show their leaves in the spring. First Bloom is based on the flowering of those same plants, and USA-NPN associates it with blooming of early-spring shrubs and leaf out of deciduous trees. The Late Bloom Index indicates when plants that bloom at the tail end of the season are flowering. A desert bluebonnet and an alpine wildflower belong to different parts of that arc, so each species on these pages is matched to whichever of the three normally fires closest to its own typical peak, and shifted by that index rather than by one generic national number.

Where do the bloom dates themselves come from?

Every window on this site is attributed to the institution that published it, with the sentence it came from printed on the page. Those are state parks departments, land grant extension services, the National Park Service and botanical research centres. 9 further species, each one a flower a state is known for, are listed on this page without a window because no citable institution puts months on them; a neighbouring state's dates are not a substitute.

Which states have a spring bloom page?

Does an early spring mean a better wildflower display?

Not necessarily, and conflating the two is the most common mistake in this subject. Timing and abundance are different variables driven by different things. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is explicit about it for bluebonnets: the amount and timing of fall and winter rain determines the success of germination and the blooming season, and bluebonnets bloom every year while how thick they come up is the variable. The Spring Index tells you when. It does not tell you how good.

Also on MyWild

The rest of the year

Spring bloom is the front half of a year we cover end to end: what is in season to forage, first and last frost dates, hummingbird migration, and autumn colour on the way back down.

Spring Index data: USA National Phenology Network, Extended Spring Indices (SI-x), usanpn.org (CC BY 4.0). Bloom windows are attributed on each state page to the institution that published them.