Coulter's lupine

Lupinus sparsiflorus, Coulter's lupine or Mojave lupine, is a slender annual herb of the Fabaceae native to the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts and adjacent regions of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, particularly Arizona, southern California, and Baja California. Plants are 20 to 60 cm tall, with erect, branched stems clothed in soft, appressed hairs. The leaves are alternate and palmately compound, with seven to eleven narrow oblanceolate leaflets that are silky-pubescent on both surfaces and radiate from a long petiole. Pea-like flowers are arranged in slender, open, often whorled racemes; the corollas are light to medium blue or lavender with a white to yellow keel-spot that turns reddish-purple after pollination. The fruit is a flattened, hairy legume containing several mottled seeds. It blooms profusely in spring following winter rains on sandy slopes, washes, and desert flats.