When you see a stand of fuzzy pink spires along a lakeshore or the edge of a wet meadow in summer, it is likely rose spirea. Each spire is a dense, narrow cone of tiny pink to deep rose flowers, several times longer than it is wide, and the many pink stamens give the clusters a soft, bottlebrush texture.
This shrub likes wet feet. It grows in bogs, swamps, wet meadows and floodplains and along streams, ponds and lakes, and it copes with waterlogged soil and rising and falling water levels better than most shrubs. It spreads by rhizomes into dense colonies, and along streams it often forms thickets that are nearly impossible to push through.
Those thickets are useful to wildlife. Marsh wrens have been found nesting in them, black-tailed deer browse the leaves, and the wet shrub habitats where it grows matter to deer, elk and birds of prey. Bumblebees, other bees and flies visit the flowers. Because it sprouts readily from its base and rhizomes, rose spirea usually survives fire and grows back.
Look for it through the summer around Mt. Hood’s lakes, wetlands and wet meadows, where its pink spires are often the most colorful thing on the shore.
How to identify it
Upright, many-stemmed shrub 3 to 6 feet tall. Leaves oblong, about 1.5 to 4 inches long, dark green above and pale and woolly below, toothed only toward the tip. Flowers tiny, pink to deep rose, in a dense, cone-shaped cluster several times longer than wide.
Look-alikes
Subalpine spirea (Spiraea splendens), found in moist openings and on rocky slopes higher in the mountains, is a lower shrub with small, flat-topped pink clusters only an inch or so across. Rose spirea's clusters are tall, narrow spires.
Habitat
Wet meadows, bogs, swamps, floodplains and the shores of lakes, ponds and streams, from the lowlands up into the subalpine zone. It tolerates waterlogged soil and fluctuating water tables.
Sightings in the forest
374 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on September 26, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →