The statistics of nucleation events in nanowires growing via the vapor-liquid-solid mechanism in the mononuclear regime is studied theoretically. A semi-analytical model is developed which is capable of describing the distributions of time intervals between the successive nucleation events and some other useful characteristics of nucleation statistics. Our model accounts for desorption from the droplet, which was not included in the previous studies of nucleation statistics. It is shown that the relative dispersion of nucleation distributions increases with the nanowire radius and at a higher desorption rate from the droplet, leading to the corresponding broadening of the length distribution. Using the model is also shown to lit well experimental data available on nucleation statistics in the Au-catalyzed Si and III-V nanowires. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.