Lupine

“ In the autumn the lupine sheds its leaves, which form a pasty muck over the ground, while new ones start out; and this it does for five years, when it dies, having fulfilled its mission. The ground can now be sown with grass and harrowed, when the grass comes up richly, and the billowy sand waste is a verdant plain. ”

“ The present, with many other species of Lupine, is very generally cultivated in flower gardens, for the sake of variety, being usually sown in the spring with other annuals; where the flower-borders are spacious, they may with propriety be admitted, but as they take up much room, and as their blossoms are of short duration, they are not so desirable as many other plants. ”

“ This soil-extract, however, was without effect on lupines and some other plants; but when the lupine pots were inoculated with an extract of a soil in which lupines were growing, the plants made a luxuriant growth, and root-tubercles were abundantly developed. In all cases the nitrogen supply of the plants was coincident with the development of root-tubercles, that were produced by inoculation with the extract of a fertile soil. ”

“ Their bitterness is considerably modified by cooking them on hot ashes, or steeping them in hot water. Employed frequently as an article of food, they impart freshness to the colour; the bitter lupine, too, is good for the sting of the asp. Dried lupines, stripped of the husk and pounded, are applied in a linen cloth to black ulcers, in which they make new flesh: boiled in vinegar, they disperse scrofulous sores and imposthumes of the parotid glands. A decoction of them, with rue and pepper, is given in fever even, as an expellent of intestinal worms,2812 to patients under thirty years of age. ”

“ Lupines are easily cultivated in moderately good garden soil; they include annuals which are among the most ornamental and most easily grown of summer flowering plants (sow in open borders in April and May) , and perennials, which are grown from seed or propagated by dividing strong plants in March and April. ”

“ In this area they are found abundantly on the high plateaus, being especially plentiful at Cedar Breaks, where they fill whole meadows with a mass of blue color in midsummer.
The Lupines range in color from pale pink to deep purple, with some white, cream or yellow, but most of them are blue. Like other plants of the Pea Family, Lupines add nitrogen to the soil and thereby improve the land on which they grow. The seeds of a few species contain alkaloids which are poisonous to livestock, especially sheep.
Lupine
29 43. ”

“ Lupines have the effect of stimulating the appetite, and of dispelling nausea. The meal of them, kneaded up with vinegar, and applied in the bath, removes pimples and prurigo; employed alone, it dries up ulcerous sores. It cures bruises also, and, used with polenta, allays inflammations. The wild lupine is found to be the most efficacious for debility of the453 hips and loins. A decoction of them, used as a fomentation, removes freckles and improves the skin; and lupines, either wild or cultivated, boiled down to the consistency of honey, are a cure for black eruptions and leprosy. ”

“ The lupine, which belongs to the Pea family, shoots off its seeds by twisting the dry pod, as it opens to let them out. Even our garden sweet peas and some of our garden beans do this. Watch to see if you can catch them at it.
Plants have many, many ways of sending their precious seed children out in the world to find a growing place.
There is no better way to spend our spare time than to watch the ripe fruits of plants and find out how the seeds are dispersed. Nearly all plants have some methods of sending their seeds abroad. ”

“ There are several species of the camas, one of which is poisonous.
Only a very thorough and industrious botanist could enumerate the flowering plants native to this country. Among the most useful is the yellow lupine, which with the white, blue, and purple varieties grows abundantly in East Oregon. The yellow variety is found to be a power in reclaiming the sandy wastes where it is sown. The seed should be mixed with rye, which grows faster and protects the young plant from the encroachments of the sand ”

“ Then I passed on to my lupines. They were all in bud, white, blue, and purple, a great joy to the bees. A little further off were great clumps of Oriental poppies, neatly and fully staked by Burbidge. Tied so that they could flower to their heart’s content and in full enjoyment of air and sunlight; not tied up in faggots, such as the ordinary gardener delights in.
252 I fondly wandered round and round. How good it was to be out in the opening splendour of June, and to look at everything to one’s heart’s content. ”

“ Both poppy and primrose (and the lupine as well) are much more at home on the foothills. There, too, are many flowers not to be seen at all on the desert. I cannot talk about them for lack of names. The brightest and showiest of them all is of a vivid, but, in my vocabulary, nameless [248] shade of red; not scarlet, nor crimson, nor orange, nor pink, but red. The plant stands a foot or so in height and bears a dozen, more or less, of rather large cup-shaped blossoms, the lively color of which would attract notice in any garden. ”

“ The plant makes rapid growth, the stems going out in all directions, some trailing on the ground. [Pg 296]
It is a good subject for the drier parts of rockwork, where a twiggy branch should be secured, which it will soon cover. It is also fine for lattice work, or it may be grown where it can appropriate the dried stems of lupine and larkspurs. For all such situations it is not only showy, but beautiful. The flowered sprays are effective in a cut state, especially by gaslight; they come in for drooping or twining purposes, and last a long time in water. ”

“ To the botanist the Texas bluebonnet is known as Lupinus because of its reputedly insatiable appetite. For generations it was believed that flowers of this genus were wolfish in the amount of plant food consumed, and that they virtually exhaust the soil on which they grow. Hence their name of wolf flowers. Happily, this charge has been proved an unjust one. The lupines are, it is true, found in sterile, waste lands, gravelly banks, exposed hills, and like places; but they do not impoverish the land. Rather they choose poor soil for their home, adding to the landscape's beauty and fertility. ”

“ Many of the forms in cultivation are hybrid. One of the best known of the perennial species is L. polyphyllus, a western North American species. It grows from 3 to 6 ft. high, and has numerous varieties, including a charming white-flowered one. The tree lupine (L. arboreus) is a Californian bush, 2 to 4 ft. high, with fragrant yellow flowers. It is only hardy in the most favoured parts of the kingdom.
LUPUS, PUBLIUS RUTILIUS, Roman rhetorician, flourished during the reign of Tiberius. ”

“ It is wild in some parts of the Mediterranean area and is extensively cultivated in Egypt. Its seeds are eaten by the poor after being steeped in water to remove their bitterness; the stems furnish fuel and charcoal for gunpowder. The lupine of the ancient Greeks and Romans was probably L. albus, which is still extensively cultivated in Italy, Sicily and other Mediterranean countries for forage, for ploughing in to enrich the land, and for its round flat seeds, which form an article of food. ”

“ If so, the lupine and vegetable-marrow seeds evidently rely partly upon their stored food and partly upon setting the cotyledons to work as leaves, whilst the plant is still very young.
The true leaves.—The cotyledons are really makeshift leaves, which are already formed in the seeds. Even when they expand and become green they do not live long, but as soon as the next few leaves are well established, shrivel up and wither. The true or “foliage” leaves first make their appearance as a bud which surrounds the growing point of the stem. ”

“ Lunt, lunt, n. a light, blaze.—v.i. (Scot.) to burn, to smoke. [Dut. lont, a match; cf. Ger. lunte.]
Lupine, lū′pīn, adj. like a wolf: wolfish.—n. a genus of leguminous plants.—adj. Lupanā′rian, bawdy.—n. Lupercā′lia, a festival among the ancient Romans, held on the 15th of February, in honour of Lupercus (Pan) , god of fertility and patron of shepherds— (Shak.) Lū′percal. [L. lupinus—lupus, a wolf, lupa, a whore.]
Luppa, lup′a, n. cloth having so much gold and silver thread as to look as if made entirely of metal. ”

“ There are about seventy species of lupines in America, mostly in the West. They can justly lay claim to being among the most brilliant of all the denizens of Nature's garden. Many a sandy waste they transform into an oasis of color. ”

“ The millet filled with crimson gladioli and great scarlet poppies. The hill-sides that look a sheet of rose-colour where the lupinelli are in bloom. The tall plumes of the canes, new-born, by the side of every stream and rivulet.
The sheaves of arum leaves that thrust themselves out from every joint of masonry or spout of broken fountain. The flame of roses that burns on every handbreadth of untilled ground and springs like a rainbow above the cloud of every darkling roof or wall. The ocean spray of arbutus and acacia shedding its snow against the cypress darkness. ”

“ Gromwell seed, provokes urine, helps the cholic, breaks the stone, and expels wind. Boil them in white wine; but bruise them first.
Lupines, ease the pains of the spleen, kill worms and cast them out: outwardly, they cleanse filthy ulcers, and gangrenes, help scabs, itch, and inflammations.
Dill seed, encreases milk in nurses, expels wind, stays vomitings, provokes urine; yet it dulls the sight, and is an enemy to generation. ”

“ Now, this country, when uncultivated, naturally produces lupines, and the blossoms of these becoming food for the bees, gives the honey such a bitterness that no person will eat it, or use it any way in food or for drink.—After the king had bestowed the village of Geesh upon me, though with the consent of Fasil its governor, that egregious shuffler, to make the present of no use to me, sent me, indeed, the tribute of the honey in very large jars, but it all tasted so much of the lupines that it was of no earthly use whatever. ”

“ There is usually more or less difference in the resistance of individuals, but never as much as that apparently indicated, in the 72-hour culture. This and similar experiments confirm the results of Koernicke and others that the effect varies directly with the duration of exposure.
Fig. 3. The relative effect of preparations of different activities is illustrated by the following typical experiment. Three sets, a, b and c, of six dry seeds of the white lupine were exposed to rays from sealed glass tubes of radium bromide by laying the tubes in contact with the hilum edges of the seeds. ”

“ I kill some things that other things may live. They cannot all have it their own way in my garden, and I must settle which side is to prevail. All the same, I do sometimes try to look at it from the slug's point of view. What does the slug think about it? Let us hope and believe that the slug does not think about it.
With what brutality, too, does the gardener fight against the prolific impulses of nature. The dead flowers must be picked off from the sweet peas; otherwise they give up work early. If you cut down the lupine spikes as soon as the beans have formed, you will get more spikes. ”

“ Then the lupines, and then the snapdragon covered it, and now that the lupines are done, and their pods are left, the tephrosia has taken their place. This small, dry hillside is thus a natural garden. I omit other flowers which grow here, and name only those which, to some extent, cover or possess it. No eighth of an acre in a cultivated garden could be better clothed or with a more pleasing variety from month to month, and while one flower is in bloom you little suspect that which is to succeed and perchance eclipse it. ”

“ That of lupines has spread with great rapidity since 1840 in the dry sandy regions of eastern Germany, where lupines have proved as well adapted for such soils as the more widely cultivated sainfoin has done for dry chalky and other limestone soils. Sugar beet is most largely cultivated in the extreme north of France and the adjoining parts of Belgium and in central Germany, to a less but still considerable extent in south-eastern Germany, northern Bohemia and the south-west of Russia. ”

“ It is not easy always to be attentive to the maturing of wild fruit. Plants are so135 unobtrusive in their material processes, and always at the significant moment some other bloom has reached its perfect hour. One can never fix the precise moment when the rosy tint the field has from the wild almond passes into the inspiring blue of lupines. One notices here and there a spike of bloom, and a day later the whole field royal and ruffling lightly to the wind. ”

“ One very common flower resembles our cardinal flower, though not of so deep a color, another is very like rocket or phlox, but smaller and of various colors, white, blue and purple. Beautiful white lupines I find too, violets white and purple. The vines and parasites are magnificent. I followed on this road till I came to the prairie which skirts the river, and this, of all the beauties of this region, is the most peculiar and wonderful. ”

“ Many fine alpine plants grew here, an anemone on the summit, two species of cassiope in shaggy mats, three or four dwarf willows, large blue hairy lupines eighteen inches high, parnassia, phlox, solidago, dandelion, white-flowered bryanthus, daisy, pedicularis, epilobium, etc., with grasses, sedges, mosses, and lichens, forming a delightful deep spongy sod. ”