Checker lily is easy to walk past. Its nodding bells are mottled in purplish brown with green or yellow, a pattern that blends into dappled shade and dry grass. Once you spot one, though, the checkered pattern on the six petal-like tepals is hard to mistake, and it is worth kneeling to look up into the bell.
The plant rises from a small, scaly bulb ringed with many tiny offset bulblets the size and shape of rice grains, which explains the name rice-root lily. The stem is unbranched, with narrow leaves in one or more whorls partway up and a few scattered above, and it is topped by a short spike of two to five flowers. After blooming, each flower becomes a broadly winged seed capsule.
Checker lilies take their time. Plants raised from seed usually need three to five years to reach flowering size, and even in the wild they don’t bloom every year. Some go dormant for a year or two after flowering and send up only a single leaf. The USDA notes that fritillaries have become uncommon in the wild, so leave the bulbs in the ground and enjoy them where they grow.
Bees, flies and wasps pollinate the flowers. Look for checker lily in spring and early summer in open woods, forest edges and grassy openings.
How to identify it
Unbranched stem from 6 inches to about 3 feet tall with narrow, lance-shaped leaves, the lower ones in whorls. Two to five nodding, broadly bell-shaped flowers with six tepals mottled purplish brown with green or yellow. Fruit is a broadly winged capsule.
Habitat
Open woods, forest edges, grassy openings and bluffs on well-drained soil, from near sea level to fairly high in the mountains. In Oregon it grows west of the Cascades, on moderately moist to dry sites.
Sightings in the forest
390 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on July 15, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →