Fringe Cups is not easily confused with other wild plants on this web site.
This is a graceful perennial which flowers in April and May. Growing to about 80cm high, it bears most unusual, small, fragrant flowers (6-8mm across) in racemes on long, elegantly arched stems. These tubular shaped flowers are greenish-white in colour and have five, turned-back and raggedly-fringed little petals. As they age, the flowers fade through pink, sometimes to a cherry red colour. Very pretty, roughly heart-shaped leaves clasp the stems and all of the plant is covered in downy hair. Fringe cups is found usually in shady places, frequently not far from cultivated ground, is not a native plant and it belongs to the family Saxifragaceae.
I first found this plant at Kilmacurragh Arboretum, Co Wicklow in 2009 and the identification was kindly made for me by Dr Darach Lupton, Dip.Hort., BA Hons.(Mod), PhD of the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland.
Fringe cups is native to the eastern part of North America, from California to Alaska but has become a firmly established garden plant in these islands and is frequently planted by gardeners in dappled shade in the company of hostas and ferns.