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The Wolf Flower - Lupine · Street Smart Naturalist

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Greetings,
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: this is David B.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Williams and the podcast of my newsletter,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: The Street Smart Naturalist, Explorations of the Urban Kind.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every week,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I share my observations and adventures with the human
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: and natural world around Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Northwest.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode explores a lovely, well-known group of plants, lupines.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: To learn more about my work,
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: including my new book,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: In the Range of Fire and Ice,
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: A Human and Natural History of Washington's Cascades,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: please go to my website, geologywriter.com.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: You'll also find a link to my Substack newsletter and my previous five and
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: a half years of newsletters, as well as images tied to this week's episode.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining me on this adventure,
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: and welcome to Podcast 91 of the Street Smart Naturalist,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: the Wolf Flower, Lupins, September 10, 2026.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: In June 1982,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: ecologists Charlie Christofulli and Jim McMahon were surveying the pumice plain
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: at Mount St. Helens.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Traveling by helicopter,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: they were seeking out life on the area most devastated by the 1980 eruption.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not surprisingly, little stirred in the moonscape.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then they landed and came across a dab of purple and green,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: as if paint splotches had splattered across an endless field of gray.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The stunning and surprising color was a flowering lupine, the first plant they'd seen for miles.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Surrounded by a ring of seedlings,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: the plant had to be at least a year old in order to produce the seedlings.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Cifuli,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: who eventually spent four decades studying the ecological recovery at the volcano,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: established a 200 square yard study plot around that pioneering plant.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Within four years, he counted 16,000 lupins in the plot.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Three years later, 35,000.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: People sometimes ask me how I can go back and study the exact same place year
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: after year, he says.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I always tell them it's never the same.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: How had life found a way back?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: The deep ash and pumice have few nutrients,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: but lupins,
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  SPEAKER_00: like other plants in the pea family,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: have a special trick up their branches, or in this case, actually down their roots.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Lupins have the ability to fix or convert inert atmospheric nitrogen into
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: a usable form,
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: which allows the species to thrive in environments inhospitable
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: to most other plants.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Technically, lupins don't actually fix the nitrogen.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: They outsource that skill to bacteria, which do their good deed in nodules on the plant's roots.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Once the lupins enriched the soil with nitrogen,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: adding organic material to it when they died,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: other plants, and then animals, soon followed.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Within a decade of the eruption,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Christofuli had documented more than 27 plant species in the studied plot.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: A large patch of strawberries sprang up just outside of it,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: probably from a single seed deposited in bird or mammal feces.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Christofouli eventually trapped a variety of small animals on the pumice plain,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: including ground squirrels, mice, and shrews.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Each has sped up the area's recovery by cashing seeds,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: burrowing through the soil, and luring predators such as raptors and weasels.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Lupines are one of the great stories of Mount St.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Helens, but that is not the only place they thrive.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen them throughout the Cascades and Olympias,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: on beaches, in the desert, in the tundra, and in cities.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot think of a habitat where I haven't seen them and would argue
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: that they are one of the more ubiquitous plants out there.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, as they are lovely.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lupins are primarily in the blue shades,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: but also tint over to magentas and purplish,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: with a few species dialing over to yellows.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: They range in size from low in stature to ones that top out at four to five feet tall.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am enchanted by the flowers,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: especially when they blew a hillside,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: as you'll see as something that appealed to Mr. Henry David Thoreau.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what I like most are the leaves.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: With their palmate leaves of 5 to 12 leaflets, they are particularly easy to distinguish.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: The structure,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: like her own palms,
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  SPEAKER_00: is perfect for catching water,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I'm always pleased to see how the leaves form a cup of a single droplet
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: of water.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The little aqueous orbs seem to be almost otherworldly in their ability
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: to harvest light, as if the droplet is glowing from within.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, lupine originates in ancient Rome.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Curiously,
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  SPEAKER_00: only a handful of lupine species,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: about a dozen,
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: grow in the Old World, whereas more than 250 occur in North and South America.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: According to the great 19th century botanist Asa Gray,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: the scientific name all species are lupinus,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: derives from the Latin term for wolf because lupins were thought to devour
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: the fertility of the soil.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: His contemporary Henry David Thoreau found this preposterous and wrote,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: this is scurrilous, in June 1852.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was correct,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: considering lupins perform the exact opposite behavior by feeding the soil
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: with nitrogen.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like many, Mr. Thoreau is quite smitten with the flowers.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It paints a whole silicide with its blue,
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: making such a field, if not meadow, as Prosperin might have wandered in.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Its leaf was made to be covered with dewdrops.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I am quite excited by this prospect of blue flowers in clumps with narrow intervals.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Such a profusion of the heavenly, the Elysian color, as if these were the Elysian fields.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is the value of Lupin.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The earth is blued with it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: What else needs to be said?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Nice work, Henry.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Once again,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: this is David B.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Williams,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: author and voice of The Street Smart Naturalist,
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Explorations of the Urban Kind,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: a weekly newsletter and podcast focusing on the human
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: and natural world around Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Northwest.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like more details about my walks, talks,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: and books,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: including In the Range of Fire and Ice,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: along with a link to sign up for my newsletter and podcast,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: check out my website, geologywriter.com.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to slow down, pay attention, and enjoy the world around you.