LUPINES!

LUPINES ARE IN BLOOM

Thursday, 8:15 AM. 60 degrees F, wind NW, lightly gusty.  The sky is cloudy and overcast and it has been raining intermittently, with an accumulation thus far of less than .25".  The humidity is 89% and the barometer is still falling, now at 29.57" but it should begin to rise shortly, presaging a nice day tomorrow.
   We are leaving this morning for LaCrosse in southwestern Wisconsin on the Mississippi River for a quarterly Urban Forestry Council meeting.  It is perhaps a five or six hour drive dependent upon route and weather.  We will be back sometime Saturday.  Buddy will enjoy a mini-vacation at Blue Ribbon Kennels in Ashland, where he can bark to his heart's content along with his kennel mates.
   Daffodils are the big blooming event of Bayfield's spring, but the flowering of the Lupines, Lupinis perennis, is the big regional floral display.  These members of the pea family, the Leguminosae, are tall, upright perennials that for a few weeks dominate fields, pastures and roadsides here along the sandy shores of the Big Lake. The blue bonnets of Texas, their close relatives, pale into insignificance beside them (and I say that as an honorary Texan).
   Whether these magnificent perennials are fully native or are some sort of escaped hybridized population is a rather moot point, as they are naturalized for haundreds of miles around the shores of Lake Superior and northern Lake Michigan.  I personally believe them to be native, but in the grand scheme of things they are here and beautiful.  In any case the mostly blue but also pink and white blooms are spectacular in appearance and abundance and well worth a visit.
  According to my records, Lupines can begin blooming any time from late May to late June, this year being about average.  We will see whether the hard winter had any deleterious effects on the population, but I doubt it.