NEWS CENTER MAINE • June 19, 2024
Mainers and tourists alike love the Lupines they see in fields and along the sides of the roads that run through the state. Photographers go into a frenzy when the blossoms are at their peak, but Maine's beloved flower is not native to Maine, making it controversial. "This Lupine showed up in the state in larger proportions around 1950," Emily Baisden, seed program director with Wild Seed Project, revealed. "The story of Miss Rumphius that a lot of us grew up reading as children, there actually was a person in kind of midcoast Maine that would spread Lupine seeds.” Behind the beauty are some ugly facts. “It’s shown to out-compete some of our important native plants for pollinators and things like the Monarch butterfly that requires the Milkweed and is now endangered,” Baisden explained.