Pink Moon

This is the most misunderstood name on the list. The Pink Moon is not pink. It is named for Phlox subulata, moss phlox or creeping phlox, one of the earliest widespread wildflowers of eastern North American spring, which carpets ground in pink at about the time April’s full moon arrives.

The moon itself looks exactly as it always does — which is to say, white overhead and orange near the horizon, for the same reason sunsets are orange. Low in the sky, moonlight travels through far more atmosphere, and the shorter blue wavelengths scatter away before they reach you. That happens every month, at every full moon, and has nothing to do with April.

The other April names are seasonal markers: eggs returning as hens resumed laying, shad running upriver to spawn, and grass sprouting. When Easter falls in April, this is also the Paschal Moon.

Also known as

• Sprouting Grass Moon
• Egg Moon
• Fish Moon
• Paschal Moon

The 1778 record

Travelling among the Dakota in 1766 and 1767, Captain Jonathan Carver wrote down all twelve month names in a single passage. Published in 1778, it predates the almanac list by roughly a century and a half and is the oldest independent check on these names.