If you love looking up at the night sky and seeing the full moon, you’re in luck! This Thursday, May 23rd will be May’s beautiful Flower Moon!
According to NASA, the full moon will begin Thursday morning, May 23rd 2024 at 9:53 AM EDT. They continue, “The Moon will appear full for about three days around this time, from Tuesday night through early Friday evening.”
Why is it called the Flower Moon?
Like the saying goes, April showers bring May flowers! May is a time for blooming flowers and new life. With spring fully sprung, everything is blossoming! For this reason, some of the oldest indigenous groups in what we now call North America, the Algonquin peoples (“as confirmed by Christina Ruddy of The Algonquin Way Cultural Centre in Pikwakanagan, Ontario,” according to the Farmer’s Almanac), called it the ‘Flower Moon.’ Of course, there are many other names for the Flower Moon across the world! Different indigenous peoples called this full moon one of many names: Budding Moon, Leaf Budding Moon, Planting Moon, Egg Laying Moon, Moon of the Shedding Ponies, Frog Moon… among many others!
The Farmer’s Almanac also says, “an old English name for this Moon is the Milk Moon. In 703 AD the English monk St. Bede the Venerable wrote that what we now call May was the ‘Three-Milkings Month,’ apparently because this was the month when cows could be milked three times a day.”
The Almanac also notes that, “Traditionally, each full Moon name was applied to the entire lunar month in which it occurred, not solely to the full Moon.”