Lupinus albifrons

Silver bush lupine

Family: Fabaceae · Type: shrub · Native

Silver bush lupine is a California native shrub found in coastal and interior mountain ranges in chaparral, woodland, and coastal scrub habitats at elevations of 100 to 1,500 meters. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces violet to lavender flowers with distinctive yellow spots that turn purple, clustered in loose inflorescences 4 to 40 centimeters long. Growing as a subshrub up to 5 meters tall with decumbent to erect stems, it displays a silvery to green hairy appearance. Its palmately compound leaves have 6 to 10 leaflets, each 10 to 45 millimeters long, clustered near the base of the plant and covered in soft silvery hairs. The fruit is a hairy pod 3 to 5 centimeters long, containing 4 to 9 mottled tan seeds.

California counties: Ventura, Solano, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Kern, Calaveras, Siskiyou, Inyo, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, Lake, Alameda, San Mateo, Butte, Orange, Tulare, Riverside, San Benito, Fresno, Sonoma, Santa Cruz, Modoc, Madera, Napa, Placer, Plumas, Sierra, Sutter, Tuolumne, Yuba, El Dorado, Nevada, San Bernardino, Mariposa, Glenn, San Joaquin, Shasta, Contra Costa, Stanislaus, Colusa, Marin, Lassen, Mendocino, San Francisco, Humboldt, Santa Clara, Amador, Trinity, San Diego, Tehama, Sacramento, Yolo, Mono, Kings, Merced

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.