Returning to the roots

[randy_byers]

The Seattle Times ran an article yesterday about wild lupine and the part it plays in the local ecology. Amongst other things lupine was the first thing to spring up in the Mt St Helens pumice. The thing that caught my eye, however, was that lupine has evolved to react to the native bumblebee: "The blossoms include an ingenious spring-loaded mechanism, triggered when the bee's weight opens the flower. That trips a dusting of saffron-colored pollen popped loose from 15 tiny anthers."

I planted a lupine in my bee-friendly garden this year, but since it's apparently a June bloomer, I guess it won't flower until next year, because it certainly isn't blooming right now. I wish I had planted more than one now, but there's time enough for that. The bee-friendly garden is nothing if not a long-term project and process of self-education.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I believe lupine is pretty annexatious. Once established, it spreads pretty aggressively, so you may want to wait on adding more until you have an idea of how well it takes where it is. It's not bamboo or anything, but not unlike zucchini, it's probably best to start small.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's very good to know. The education continues!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

And thanks, btw, for the link. I spotted that article in an honor box yesterday, and was tempted to pick up a dead-tree paper to read it.

[wrdnrd]

I love that the highest-voted comment on that post is someone who posted the YouTube link to the Pythons' "Dennis Moore" sketch. "Stand and deliver! Your lupin(e)s or your life!"

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's nice that the Pythons are surviving the generational cut. It balances out Journey.

[wrdnrd]

WHAT?? Journey is awesome. You take that back!!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I won't! I had the most hilarious conversation about Journey with my niece and nephews on Roatan this year. My niece's husband: "Chicks dig Journey." That obviously explains a lot about my love life!

[wrdnrd]

Well, it's true, i only really enjoy a handful of Journey songs -- mostly some of their biggest hits. Of early-'80s arena rock bands, i actually prefer Styx.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I think of Styx as a '70s band (soundtrack to my high school years, argh!), and by the time Journey recorded "Don't Stop Believing" I was listening to Elvis Costello and Brian Eno and Talking Heads. Journey was the anthesis of all I held sacred. I'm less doctrinaire now and have even gone back to listening to Yes, who were a favorite in high school. I'll even listen to country-western now and again. (Which was my father's music.)

[wrdnrd]

Yeah, when Journey was big i was only about 10 or 12 or so and was still subject to the musical whims of my mother. (Tho', thankfully, i escaped without any love at all for The Carpenters or Barry Manilow.) A few years later, when i was finally acquiring my own musical tastes, it was more Indigo Girls and They Might Be Giants and whomever else Sassy magazine had featured that month. Still following someone else's musical whims, i suppose, but at least they had better taste! I'll take Elvis Costello and Robyn Hitchcock ANY day over most of Mom's collection. I guess i'm still stuck with Journey and Styx and Loverboy, tho'.

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Lupines are also the only home for the endangered Karner Blue butterfly which I researched a couple years ago, enough to write this pome about em. You gots any in your neckada woods?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Wow, I like the poem, and the butterfly is pretty too. Looks like we don't have them around here. Wikipedia claims that the butterfly depends on Lupinus perennis, whereas the wild lupine around here (at least that this article is talking about) is Lupinus polyphyllus. The Wikipedia page on Lupinus polyphyllus again mentions its attractiveness to bees (no mention of butterflies) and its ability to improve poor soil. I see they also echo akirlu's warning that they can become invasive. That's a problem with foxglove too, as I recall.