Ground pink, also known as ground phlox, is one of the earliest wild flowers of spring. Other names for this full moon were the full sprouting grass moon, the egg moon, and—among coastal tribes—the full fish moon, when the shad came upstream to spawn.

In 2003, this moon was the first full moon of spring and so was also the paschal moon that marks the first day of the feast of Passover and is also used to calculate the date of Easter; that is, the Sunday following the first full moon of spring.