Fringe cups is easy to walk past until you look closely at a single flower. Each one is a small green cup, and its petals are split at the tips into five to seven narrow fingers, so the rim looks fringed or lacy. The petals range from greenish white to rose, and dozens of flowers line one side of a tall, slender stem.
The plant starts as a clump of long-stalked, heart-shaped leaves with shallow lobes, uneven teeth and plenty of soft hairs. From spring into midsummer it sends up flowering stems that can reach two feet or more, shaggy with long hairs near the base and sticky with glands near the flowers. Each flower ripens into a small capsule holding 100 or more tiny brown seeds.
Fringe cups belongs to the saxifrage family, along with foamflower and piggyback plant, which share its taste for damp shade. It grows from Alaska to California. Look for it along creeks, at forest edges and in moist woods from the lowlands to middle elevations, where its pale spikes stand out against the dark understory in spring.
How to identify it
Basal leaves are heart- to kidney-shaped, about 1 to 3 inches wide, shallowly lobed, toothed and hairy, on long stalks. Flowering stems 16 to 30 inches tall carry many small flowers, mostly along one side. Each flower is a greenish cup whose greenish white to rose petals are split at the tip into thin, fringe-like segments.
Look-alikes
Piggyback plant has similar hairy, lobed leaves but brownish purple flowers with thread-like brown petals. Foamflower has smaller, airy white flowers on a slender stalk and leaves that are usually split into three leaflets.
Habitat
Damp woods, forest edges, thickets and streambanks, from the lowlands to middle elevations in the mountains.
Sightings in the forest
572 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on October 28, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →