Into the Wild Blue

 
The lavender of the crocuses is gone and we’re into the blue period of the seasonal wildflower show.

These flowers are wild lupines. At least that’s what we call them here in the Yukon. Texans call their particular variety of lupines bluebonnets, which makes them sound a whole lot more intriguing, doesn’t it?

Lupines are legumes, which means they’re related to peas and beans and peanuts. Each one of those little blooms grows into a peapod-like seed packet. You don’t want to eat the seeds of these legume pods, though, because they contain a bitter poison. Thankfully, lupines make up for their toxicity with their loveliness, and before long I expect to see a solid sweep of lupine blue on each side of one of my favorite woodland walking trails down by the river.

I’ve also seen another blue wildflower recently (below). This one is called Jacob’s ladder because of their ladder-like leaves. This is a plant that can do unbroken stretches of colour, too. There are places on my regular dog-walking trail around my subdivision where entire hillsides become blue with a low carpet of blooming Jacob’s ladder.

Soon there’ll be one more blue wildflower blooming in my perennial garden; I’ll show it to you when it’s here. And after these initial blue blossoms, the summer wildflower revue moves on to the pretty pinks.

Previous wildflower post: 

• Lavender Charm 

Photos by Andrew Stark.

Update on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 8:30AM by rebecca

At Kim’s suggestion, I submitted this post to Project Blue at Anna Carson Photography.

Comments

[Dorothy]

The blues are beautiful, Rebecca! I'm enjoying tagging along on your Yukon walks.

[Kim from Hiraeth]

You should submit this post to Project Blue over at Anna Carson Photography. Really. You should.

[rebecca]

I did. Thanks for suggesting it. (I've seen you and others mentioning project blue, but I didn't take the time to find out what it is. I'm still not sure I understand, but my post's there!)

[Robert]

Great images here. I'm glad you shared them with us. :)

[Raven]

Thank you for the horticulture lesson as well as the beautiful photos. You've given me another gift. I have some flower pictures from my back yard that I wasn't sure would qualify as "blue." But you have given me the "lavender's blue dilly, dilly," go-ahead. Cool. One of my favorite photos of my niece is her sitting in a field of blue bonnets. I can see why Texans like them so.

[Karen of Sillymonkeez]

Beautiful! The vivid green offsets the blue so well.

[Gina]

Beautiful pics..especially love the first one! :)

[Rebecca]

Those flowers are lovely!