Candy flower is a small, fleshy wildflower of damp, shady places, and the name fits: its white to pink petals are often lined with thin, darker pink stripes, like old-fashioned striped candy. It grows on both sides of the Cascades, from the lowlands up to middle elevations in the mountains, and on Mt. Hood you are most likely to meet it in moist forest and along creeks.
The bloom season is unusually long. Flowers can open in early spring and keep appearing into September. Plants may live for a single year or carry on for a few years, and they can spread by creeping stems and small bulblets as well as by seed, which is why candy flower often grows in loose patches.
A good field mark is the single pair of stalkless leaves partway up each stem, just below the loose sprays of flowers. Most of the other leaves rise from the base on long stalks. Candy flower belongs to the same genus as miner’s lettuce, and the two are worth comparing side by side if you find them on the same walk.
How to identify it
A fleshy plant 2 to 16 inches tall. Most leaves rise from the base on long stalks and have lance- to diamond-shaped blades; each stem also carries one pair of stalkless, opposite leaves below the flowers. Loose sprays of five-petaled flowers about a third to three quarters of an inch across are white to pink, often with darker pink lines.
Look-alikes
Miner's lettuce grows in similar places, but its stem leaves are fused into a round disk that the flower cluster rises through, and its flowers are much smaller. Candy flower's pair of stem leaves stays separate.
Habitat
Moist, usually shady places in forests and along streams, from the lowlands to middle elevations in the mountains, on both sides of the Cascade crest.
Sightings in the forest
555 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on September 26, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →