Lupines

This post is contributed by Barnaby Porter from his archives. Read the previous post here.

Photo: Sketches for the book Miss Rumphius

Company was coming, and I was told to go out and pick some flowers to spruce up the house. “Get lupines,” I heard as the screen door slammed behind me. So, I did. I filled a whole bucket with them, as many different colors as I could find.

I must say, lupines certainly have a spectacular bloom, from royal hues of purple and blue to pink and white. There was a time though when I didn’t like lupines much; they looked too spikey and exotic for my taste, too much like someone else’s idea of what a pretty flower ought to look like – not mine.

But this plant has got a lot of attention over the years. I see articles in magazines like Yankee and Down East, celebratory pieces that remark at length on its perennial habit, its preference for roadsides and abandoned fields, and its fickle response to human encouragement. Like a lot of things, like cauliflower, brussels sprouts and sauerkraut, lupines grew on me. Their persistent presence wore me down. Their true beauty prevailed, and I succumbed to it.

In more recent years, I have harbored a penchant for their vaulting blue spikes. I got in the habit of raking the drying seed pods off mature plants with my fingers wherever I encountered them, putting them in my pocket to be distributed when I got closer to home. I’ve transplanted whole plants too and even gone so far as to encourage certain color strains. A far cry from the old days, I became a firm admirer of the now-gone-wild lupine flower.

But the lupine still suffers from indifference I think, at least from some quarters. A crew of boys and machines arrived at my work establishment to mow the lawns the other day. I quickly spotted the guy with the weed trimmer, a dangerous-looking lad, and took him aside to point out some budding lupines I have been nurturing alongside a drainage ditch. “Don’t whack down my lupines,” I told him. “They’re going to bloom this year.” He had a quizzical look on his face. “The leaves look like marijuana,” I coached. “If it’s got leaves like these, leave it.” That seemed to do the trick of getting my point across, and there might be one more lupine convert in the world as a result.

I know one man though, who has apparently seen more than his fair share of them – Bob. Bob makes his living moving earth with machines. I was telling him about my conversion to favoring a landscape covered with lupines. When I got around to mentioning the much-celebrated local lady who, like Johnny Appleseed, went about the countryside scattering lupine seeds, he cut me short. “Don’t want to hear about it,” he rankled. “Whoever she was, she should have been shot.”

I didn’t have an answer. From my own experience, I know, these things take time.

Artist and author Barnaby Porter has had a varied career in marine research, aquaculture, and woodworking, among others. Most recently he partnered with his wife Susan as co-owners of the Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe in downtown Damariscotta. In October 2021, Barnaby completed his tenure on Coastal Rivers’ Board of Trustees after six years of service.