Lupine is a wildflower abundant around the world, known for its usually blue or purple (sometimes yellow) flowers, which can often color a whole hillside. Lupine is a small herbaceous shrub with palmate leaves. The flowers are borne many to a stalk and are not radially symmetrical and are typical of legume flowers. There is a village in the Andes which subsists on lupine seeds, but mostly lupine is valued for its flowers. You can use it as a landscape plant as long as you treat it like a wildflower.. it will reseed and come back year after year. Although webster would have you believe lupines deplete the soil they actually add nitrogen to the soil, as all legumes (family Fabaceae) do. This makes them important in ecosystems in that they can colonize very nitrogen-poor areas and make them suitable for other plants. They are often seen with California Poppy growing on the hills in California. One species of lupine is 'Lupinus succulentus'

Lu"pine (?), n. [L. lupinus, lupinum, apparently fr. lupinus belonging to a wolf, fr. lupus a wolf; perh. so called because it was supposed to exhaust the soil: cf. F. lupin. Cf. Wolf.] Bot.

A leguminous plant of the genus Lupinus, especially L. albus, the seeds of which have been used for food from ancient times. The common species of the Eastern United States is L. perennis. There are many species in California.

 

© Webster 1913.


Lu"pine (?), a. [See Lupine, n.]

Wolfish; ravenous.

Gauden.

 

© Webster 1913.

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