A field record of the lupine wildflower
and the high country it inhabits.
FIG. 01 — Lupinus latifolius, broadleaf lupine, in flowering bloom. Field sketch, mid-July, talus margin.
The lupine is the first to settle disturbed slopes — scree, fire-scar, gravel bar — fixing nitrogen in the thin alpine soil before slower plants follow.
It is a workhorse of the high country. The genus Lupinus contains some six hundred species, distributed across the temperate world, but the alpine forms share a common temper: a stalwart taproot, palmate leaves cupped to catch dew, and a tall raceme of papilionaceous blooms in violet, indigo, and occasionally a clear cream. The flowers open from the base of the stalk upward, a slow vertical procession that mirrors the slope of the mountainside on which they grow.
What follows in these pages is a record of one season's observation — June through September, 1974 — across three drainage basins of the Northern Cascades. The notes are field notes: terse, marked by altitude and weather, intended as much for the next surveyor as for the reader at home.
SUBJECT: Lupinus latifolius / OBSERVATION SEASON: JUN — SEP / RANGE: 1100 — 2300 m
FIG. 02 — Soil profile and lupine taproot, depth to ~12m horizon. Survey transect B-2.
Mountain soil is an unforgiving medium. Wind takes what the snow does not bury, and what remains is mostly rock.
In the talus fields above timberline, the lupine occupies a narrow band where mineral soil has begun to accumulate but where larger plants — the krummholz spruce, the heather mat — have not yet arrived. It is a pioneer species in the strict sense: it goes first, and it makes the going easier for what comes next.
The taproot reaches downward through fractured rock, through the thin organic horizon, into mineral soil that has not been touched since the glacial retreat. Symbiotic Rhizobium bacteria in the root nodules fix atmospheric nitrogen, enriching the slope. Year by year, the duff accumulates. Year by year, the slope softens.
A
2,300m
Upper limit observed, north-facing scree, lichen co-occurrence.
B
1,650m
Densest stands, south-facing alpine meadow, shallow loam.
C
1,100m
Lower limit observed, mixed conifer understory boundary.
FIG. 03 — Transect plan, basin C. Sample plots at 100m intervals along east bearing.
A line on a map; a tape pulled across a slope; a square meter examined leaf by leaf. The method is plain because the country requires it.
For each transect, a fixed bearing was walked from a known landmark — a particular boulder, a junction of streams. At hundred-meter intervals, a square-meter quadrat was set down and the contents recorded: species present, percent cover, height of tallest stem, soil type, slope, aspect, evidence of grazing or fire. The notebook was a Rite-in-the-Rain, the pencil a No. 2, and the weather, more often than not, was wind.
Numbers, when one is honest, only describe what the eye has already seen. The transect is a way of being slow on purpose, of noticing what one might otherwise walk past — the small lupine, the vetch in seed, the grass beneath the grass.
FIG. 04 — Bloom intensity, basin A — C composite, by week. Peak: late June through mid-July.
The lupine keeps a steady calendar. It rises with the snowmelt, blooms in the long-light weeks of midsummer, and is in seed before the first cold rain.
Across the three basins, the population is stable. Counts in basin A and B are within a few percent of the 1968 baseline; basin C, where a wildfire passed through in the spring of 1971, shows a marked increase — the lupine has done what lupines do, which is fill in the burned ground first.
In every plot examined, the species kept its preferred company: red mountain heather, Sitka valerian, paintbrush, the dwarf willows. Only in the most exposed alpine sites did it stand alone, and there it stood as one would expect — small, close to the ground, holding fast to whatever soil the wind had spared.
BASIN A
+2.4%
Slight increase over 1968 baseline. Seed-set robust.
BASIN B
−1.1%
Marginal decline. Possible browse pressure.
BASIN C
+18.6%
Strong post-fire recolonization, dense stands.
FIG. 05 — Lupine field, basin A meadow, late afternoon. Wind west-southwest, light failing.
Snow gone from the south-facing slopes. The first lupines have come up in the meadow above the lake — perhaps a week behind last year. Counted forty-two flowering stalks within the first transect. The bees have not yet found them. By next week they will.
The whole north slope above the col is in flower. From the ridge it looks as one might paint a wash — purple-blue laid over the sage-green grass, broken here and there by the white of the avalanche lily where the snow left it last. Stopped working at three when the rain came on. The notebook held up. The pencil did not.
The flowers are gone. The pods stand straight along the stalks, brown and dry, splitting open in the cold morning. Seed scatters at a touch. The burn is greener than I have seen it in three years. The lupine has done its work. We will see in spring.