Wild Lupine
Lupinus perennis. Pulse Family.
Stem.--Erect; one to two feet high. Leaves.--Divided into seven to eleven leaflets. Flowers.--Blue; papilionaceous; showy; in a long raceme. Pod.--Broad; hairy.
In June the long bright clusters of the wild lupine are very noticeable in many of our sandy fields. Its pea-like blossoms serve to easily identify it. Under date of June 8th, Thoreau writes: "The lupine is now in its glory. . . . It paints a whole hill-side with its blue, making such a field (if not meadow) as Proserpine might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be covered with dew-drops. I am quite excited by this prospect of blue flowers in clumps, with narrow intervals, such a profusion of the heavenly, the Elysian color, as if these were the Elysian fields. . . That is the value of the lupine. The earth is blued with it."