Foothill lupine

Lupinus albifrons, commonly known as silver lupine or foothill lupine, is an evergreen perennial shrub in the family Fabaceae native to California and southern Oregon, where it grows on dry slopes, chaparral, open pine forest and disturbed ground from the coast to the inner foothills. It typically forms a rounded silvery bush 0.5 to 1.5 metres tall with stout woody stems clothed in dense silky white hairs that give the plant its characteristic silver-grey colour. The palmately compound leaves bear six to ten narrowly oblanceolate leaflets that are densely silvery-hairy on both surfaces. In spring and early summer it produces erect terminal racemes 10 to 30 centimetres long of fragrant pea-shaped flowers in shades of blue to violet with a paler keel. The fruit is a hairy legume 4 to 6 centimetres long that splits and twists at maturity to scatter several mottled seeds. The plant fixes atmospheric nitrogen and is an important early-successional and slope-stabilising species.