Wolf Plant

It is common to hear people complain that long stretches of Maine highways are stark, boring, or desolate; feel free to insert your favorite adjective.  Maybe it depends on where you grew up, say in some over-developed city, with buildings, lights, signs and people screaming for attention at every turn.  For me there is great natural beauty and serenity along the 46,851 miles of Maine roads.  Driving here reminds me of other rustic spots I have enjoyed such as Wyoming, the Adirondacks or central Sweden – conifers, mountains, wildlife, lakes and streams.  As a bonus there comes a time each year when Maine’s roads jump to life with color.

You might assume that I am referring to the splashy, bold colors of autumn.  While the fall is my favorite time of year, there is another season when the roadsides are flush with more subtle colors.  That is the period between April and July when spring and summer wild flowers come to life.  There is no shortage of beautiful blossoms along the highways but one plant stands out in my mind, the stately lupine.  While lupines are not unique to Maine, my wife and I never lived in lupine country until coming here “from away.”   Now that we are happily settled in this lovely state I look forward to lupine time each year.

As you cruise along enjoying the parade of blue, purple, white and pink blooms you might think that it has always looked like this.  In fact, Maine has suffered the loss of our native lupines since 1900 and the plants we see here most often are transplants or hybrids.  In the process we have also lost some beautiful and valuable wildlife.  This is a story of man’s development of natural places and the lupine version of Johnny Appleseed.

The native plant is known as Lupinus perennis, more commonly called the wild, blue or sundial lupine.  This plant reaches a height of two feet with flowers between four and ten inches high.  While blue is the predominant color, the blossoms can appear in light purple or pale pink.  The natural habitat runs to dry forest openings, rocky or sandy soils with plenty of sunshine.  The seed of the wild lupine has a very tough coating that needs abrasion or rapid heating to allow new growth.  Those conditions are most often caused by forest fires or major disturbances like fierce storms.  The development of Maine by man resulted in the loss of big swaths of native lupine habitat and of course forest fires are now controlled whenever possible to avoid the loss of life and property.  The wild lupine has not been documented in Maine in a few years and is listed by the state as rare and possibly extirpated.

Lupines are part of a large family of flowering plants (Fabaceae) with more 200 lupine species found nearly worldwide. Lupines are legumes, distant relatives of the pea, and capable of living in poor quality soil.  They have been cultivated for thousands of years for their beauty and for their seeds which can reach 50% protein in some varieties.   The name lupine (from the Latin word lupinus meaning “wolfish”) probably originated with ancient Roman gardeners who believed that lupines exhausted the soils where they grew.  In fact, lupines can thrive on poor quality soils because they are nitrogen-fixers, capable of improving the soil over time and promoting the growth of other plants.

The decline of the wild lupine affected other species, in particular, insects and caterpillars accustomed to feeding on the plant.  A number of Lepidoptera species including moths and butterflies like the clouded sulfur, the Eastern tailed blue and the gray hairstreak lay their eggs on wild lupine, serve as pollinators of the plant, and their larvae feed on the gray-green leaves of the plant.  One particularly attractive butterfly, the endangered Karner blue, is known to be dependent upon access to wild lupine so the butterfly has declined with the plant and is also extirpated from Maine.

Now the lupine equivalent of Johnny Appleseed enters the story.  In 1904 a young girl named Hilda Edwards arrived with her family in South Bristol ME from her native England.  Hilda fell in love with Maine and while attending Smith College spent her summers in a cottage at Christmas Cove.  Though she married and moved to Paris with her husband Hilda found her way back to Christmas Cove each summer.  Enamored with the beautiful lupines that grew near the cottage, Hilda began to gather the dried lupines and to spread the seeds in places with no lupines growing.  Starting around 1950 Hilda began to import lupine seeds from England.  These seeds were spread along roadsides as she travelled about on foot or with friends in their cars.  Although Hilda was discreet about her activities friends gradually caught on and began calling her Hilda Lupine, or the Lupine Lady.

It is unfortunate that the lupine seeds from England were from a different lupine variety, the bigleaf lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus).  These lupines are robust, showy plants growing up to six feet tall with flowers two feet long.  They are more colorful than the wild lupines and capable of crowding out the smaller native plants.  In 1971 Yankee magazine published a story about the Lupine Lady, and the secret was out.  Hilda was besieged with letters from around the world, many of them asking for lupine seeds and she obliged as long as she could.  Of course, this resulted in the bigleaf lupines being planted in many locations where they grew as invasive plants.  To complete Hilda’s story, in 1992 Barbara Cooney published a children’s book titled “Miss Rumphius” that offered a fictionalized account of the Lupine Lady.  While the story may be endearing it is one more in a long line of well-intentioned but harmful species transplants by mankind that had unintended consequences.

Today the bigleaf lupine has become widespread in many parts of Maine and the rest of the US.  It has been crossed with other lupine species to create a wide variety of cultivars with all the colors of the rainbow.  They are popular with gardeners for their beauty and their ability to attract some pollinators.  These imports and hybrids are not as durable here as the wild lupines and some of our native insects will not interact with them because of different chemicals in the plants.  In recent years a movement has begun for gardeners to plant the sundial or wild lupines in the hope of bringing the plant back to a healthy place in our state.

The wild lupine does not produce nectar but the pollen is attractive to a number of bee species, some of them at risk because of population declines.  Among them are mason bees, mining bees and bumble bees.  Wildlife ecologist and lupine enthusiast Deborah Perkins reports that scientists studying wild lupines in New Hampshire discovered that the flower petals change color after being pollinated.  This serves as a signal to bees that they should focus their pollination efforts on other flowering plants.

It is known that lupine seeds have been used for food going back 6,000 years in the Andes, and there is evidence of their early use around the Mediterranean and among Native Americans.  While the seeds may be nutritious, they can contain high levels of isoflavones and alkaloids chemicals that are toxic to animals and humans in some lupine varieties.  Extensive research on low alkaloid or “sweet” lupines for cultivation has been conducted in recent decades and they are now grown extensively in Australia, with more interest in the seeds in Western Europe and the US.  There is an interest in using the lupine as an alternative to soybeans in areas of lower quality soil.  Lupine seeds are gluten-free and score high in the levels of antioxidants, amino acids and dietary fiber.

The next time you are buzzing along Route 95 to a critical springtime appointment just take a few moments to gaze at the lovely lupines along the highway.  They are an important part of Maine’s scenic beauty and with luck we will be enjoying a recovery of native wild lupines in the years to come.

If you like Ed Robinson’s writing, check out his two Nature Notes books! Click here for more information.