Think your dog is faithful? Compare them with loyal lupines. Come spring, they’re among the most faithful native plants to appear. In North America, you can find these beauties returning year after year from New England to the Great Plains and all the way to California. They stretch southward deep into South America, and are even a common sight in Great Britain, Europe, Iceland, the Mediterranean and New Zealand.
Lupine’s beautiful blue flowers bloom early in the season above lovely, relatively pest-free foliage.
Photo Credit: James H. Schutte
Next to red-flowering
Salvia greggii, bluebonnets make a lovely combination in early spring.
Photo Credit: David Lupinus Morgan
The Texas bluebonnet is generally found as a spiked, blue flower, but cultivars are now available in white, pink and maroon, as well as a red and white bicolor.
Photo Credit: David Lupinus Morgan
Russell Hybrid lupines like full sun with some midday shade.
Here in the US, lupines (also called lupins or bluebonnets, if you prefer) bloom from March to April. You’ll find them mostly in pretty shades of blue, covering roadsides and pastures like a giant quilt. Interspersed with the occasional reds and yellows of companion plants, the scenes they create are truly something above and beyond the capacity of any landscape designer.
These wonderful natives are so beloved in Texas, that in 1971 the state legislature designated all of them – the six native species and any others that might be discovered later – the state flower. (Texas is where we call them bluebonnets, and nowadays many Texans declare their landscapes incomplete without at least one patch of this lovely plant in their gardens.)
The original Texas state flower was Lupinus subcarnosus. Along with Lupinus texensis, they’re the only commercially available Texas bluebonnets presently available by seed. Lupinus subcarnosus is a wondrous sky blue with a touch of white, and it’s considered by many to be the most beautiful of all bluebonnets. It stands about a foot tall with 2- to 4-inch flower spikes.
The largest of the state’s bluebonnets is the deep blue Big Bend bluebonnet, Lupinus havardii, which stands 3-4 feet tall. The perennial Russell Hybrid lupines, Lupinus (Russell Hybrids), developed in England and common in the trade, are larger, standing 3-4 feet high with flower stalks (or racemes) 1-2 feet long. A recently discovered Mexican lupine, Lupinus jaimehintonianus, is even larger – it’s a tree that grows up to 26 feet tall and has a trunk 8 inches in diameter.
Even though Texans call these plants “bluebonnets,” they’re not all blue. Some species actually have white or red flowers, and researchers have developed cultivars in shades of red, pink, orange, yellow, maroon and even bicolors. While most often sold as annuals, in nature they can appear as biennials, herbaceous perennials or evergreen shrubs and trees.
One of the reasons these plants are so popular is that lupines adapt to many soils. If you plant in fall, the next spring you’re sure to be rewarded with lovely flowers that produce abundant fruit and will reseed your garden. (You can purchase them as small plants in spring, but they may not seed well because most lupines must overwinter in the ground to bloom prolifically. Additionally, setting out plants in spring usually produces disappointingly small, pale flowers.) For uniform coverage, it’s best to buy the seed in fall and sow directly either into the soil or indoors and make your own transplants.
To plant seeds, select a well-drained location that receives at least 8 hours of direct sunlight a day. For best results, sow from Sept. 1 through Dec. 1 in the southwestern US. (In other locations, they may be planted later in winter.) Loosen the soil with a rake or hoe, and smooth the surface to remove clumps or debris. Broadcast the seed over the area, then roll or press the seed into the soil no deeper than 1/8 of an inch. (It’s okay if some of the seed is still visible.) Keep the soil moist until the seeds begin to germinate, then make certain the seedlings don’t dry out. (And watch for birds – they ate my entire seed crop one year!)
Here are a couple extra hints when it comes to planting and growing bluebonnets: First, only purchase scarified lupine seed – that is, seed that’s been treated with acid to allow water to penetrate the hard seed coat. Second, don’t mow lupine foliage until the seedpods are ripe – which means at least half of the pods have turned brown in color. You’ll get better reseeding rates this way – although it may take a few years to get your bluebonnet patch going since it can take about three years for natural scarification to occur.
Treated seeds germinate quickly, emerge as small seedlings with two cotyledons, and form rosettes of leaves that remain low on the ground until early spring, when they send up plumes of blue flowers. If you’ve planted some of the larger perennial species and cultivars, you can propagate them by cuttings, with part of the crown attached.
In general, lupines don’t have many pest problems. Just plant them in a well-drained, sunny location. In late spring, when flowers begin to fade, you may see some powdery mildew on the foliage, but that’s about it.
Lupines make great annuals or perennials for any garden. They announce spring in most locations and are long gone before it’s time to plant your summer annuals. They enrich the soil and will enrich your garden – so why not give them a try? Everything’s better with bluebonnets on it!
