How I Fell in Love

 

When I headed north for my first year of college, I had no idea what lay in store for me. Coming from Miami, I had a very "tropical" understanding of plants. What in the north grew indoors as houseplants, I had known to grow outdoors in my yard. I had never known deciduous trees or perennial plants. I had never experienced spring bulbs. It was a wholly new way to see plants!

 

On my first trip to mid-coast Maine, back in the late 80's,  I happened to be driving the backroads during the lupine bloom. I was surprised to the extreme. I had never seen wildflowers bloom in such profusion. And before anyone asks, no... I had never read about Miss Rumphius either. That would come that summer, courtesy of my farm boss. (That's another story altogether.)

Driving around and stopping to gawk at these fields of wild lupines filled me with a new love. Fields filled with blue and purple, from treeline all the way to the road. I was smitten!

Imagine my surprise when I returned a few months later and there was no sign of them. Some of the fields had been burned to stimulate the low growing blueberry crop. Other fields were hip deep in grass.  I was heartbroken. I mistakenly thought that the bloom would last all summer. It was in this way that I started my learning about the way perennials bloom. I also discovered from a Mainer, that the year I had visited, they had experienced a novel year where all the lupines bloomed all at once. Everyone was still talking about how amazing it was. Not sure if that helped me feel better or not. I still felt bereft. If only I had taken a photo of everything... I was in love... and I had nothing to show for it.

 

I didn't see many lupines during my time in college in Amherst, MA. Homes in town might have a few in their small cottage gardens, but they would be vying for primacy alongside peonies and other late spring perennials. 

My next chance to see them in the wild, up close, was on a visit to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. I had gone out to visit family in Cody, not long after the big fires swept through Yellowstone. While hiking in the backcountry, in areas of recently burned forest, I came into a clearing full of lupines in full summer bloom! It was such a shock of brilliant clear blue against the fire-charred black that dominated the landscape. At first I had no idea that they were the same family of flower. I couldn't imagine that the same plant could exist in such different landscapes.

 

 Years later, after returning to the east coast and buying a house near Ithaca NY, I decided to try growing lupines in my garden. I bought a packet of lupine seed along with a wildflower mix. The lupines managed to bloom for a few years, but the wildflower mix failed to impress. It would take a few more years of trial and error to start to learn what lupines want or need. Saving seed from year to year helped me understand their short-lived nature. Observation: they seem to do best in poor conditions. If they are trampled underfoot, they will bloom with the most beautiful colors and in some cases, even rebloom throughout the summer. 

Observation #2: if you baby them, they fail. Miserably. I bought an expensive package of seeds that advertised dozens of different colors of hybrid lupines. Imagine my surprise when they came up and succumbed to aphids before the first bloom appeared.  Weak seedlings will struggle to deal with bugs and disease.

Observation #3: saving seed from other gardens in my region results in tough plants! That might be obvious. During COVID, I joined NARGS, and started participating in the midwinter seed exchange/sale. Through NARGS, I acquired a few varieties of lupines that I had never tried. The Lupinus polyphyllus 'My Castle' produced the most intense, rich red! Unable to keep the bees from pollinating every lupine they could find, the reds eventually became more muted, yet still remarkable.

This past year I had a few bi-color red/pinks that came up as volunteers... which leads me to Observation #4: volunteer seedlings should be moved when they are tiny and the soil is wet. Folks assume that plants with a strong taproot will fail if you transplant them. Just not so. I have moved dozens and dozens of lupines now... and I can say without exception, if I transplant the afternoon before it rains, they transplant just fine. Easiest to do in early spring when the rains are frequent (hah! Not anymore. Thanks climate change!) Observation #5: if you're not saving seed, cut the spent flower stalks off. Let that energy go back into those big roots. In most cases you'll get a few good years of blooms out of the individual plants.