LUPINUS nanus: Sky Lupine

There are beautiful garden variety Lupines, but my favorite are the  
WILD FLOWERS, like this  one I found just outside Rustic Canyon in
California.  I believe it is the SKY LUPINE, which can be found
in meadows, prairies, & forest clearings in Baja Mexico, California,
Eastern Oregon & in Nevada.  They are related to the Texas Bluebonnets,
LUPINUS Texensis.

They are popular with bumble bees & butterflies, plus they have a sweetly florid scent. They bloom in the late Spring & into early Summer, just as when I saw this Sky Lupine.  They like full sun or light shade, average soil but will tolerate sandy, dry soil.  

Every time I have come across this wild beauty, it is always an unexpected pleasure.  When we lived in Michigan, while walking our dogs in a
dense oak forest behind our house, I stumbled across a meadow 
full of wild Lupines in full bloom, totally undisturbed.  I went back several times & collected a few seed pods; but I was unsuccessful in germinating them.  Here, in Californias,  I have seen them on slopes, in weed infested roadside gravel, & here next to a parking lot.  Every time, I feel the same joy in seeing them.

A favorite children's book is 
MISS RUMPHIUS 
By:  Barbara Cooney
It is a lovely picture book about a woman who  travelled her whole life, but at the end, she walked on foot spreading Lupine seeds wherever she went.
It is fiction, but I like to think  this is how these beautiful wild flowers 
became so widespread in surprising places.

I would like to travel in her footsteps....