Invasive Species
Lupines are not native to the Minnesota North Shore. Every summer the ditches along Highway 61 explode with a shock of color – purple, lavender, blue, white, pink, and the rare red lupine wave in the breeze off Lake Superior. The flowers grow on long spikes, each flower consisting of five distinct petals — a banner at the top, two wings, and a curved keel which is really two petals fused together and houses the reproductive parts — like nature’s underwear.
My driveway is lined with lupines; I did not plant them. They come back every year – much to the bane of naturalists and master gardeners who tell me that the lupine is an invasive species that crowds out plants native to Northern Minnesota.
On a deep dive on the internet, I discover that lupine comes from the Latin word Lupus, meaning “wolf”, due to the erroneous belief that lupines deplete the soil of nutrients, but maybe they earn the title through their predatory nature on other plants. In literature, lupines symbolize healing from trauma and transformation.
There is a children’s story by Barbara Cooney, Miss Rumphius, about how lupines became so prolific. In it, Alice Rumphius, also known as the Lupine Lady, longed to travel the world, live in a house by the sea, and leave the world a more beautiful place. She scattered lupine seeds everywhere she went. Though Cooney’s story is set in Maine, I’ve adopted it as a North Shore story. Her quest was so earnest and so complete, I contend, that her seeds proliferated across states – all the way to Minnesota. Maybe it’s a tall tale, but isn’t that the best kind?
Some of my friends are lupine haters. How, you wonder, can I keep such company? We all have our secrets. They don’t tell me when they rip out stands of lupine from the ditches in front of their house. And I don’t tell them when I collect and scatter the dried seed pods in my yard. There are so many lupines here that it seems futile to destroy them, and why let the seed pods of those that have been ripped out go to waste?
In my novel, THE VIOLET HOUR BOOK CLUB, my protagonist Violet, recently widowed, moves to the Minnesota North Shore. Like Alice Rumphius she longs to live in a house by the sea – Lake Superior, the inland sea – to start over. As a widowed, sixty-five-year old woman, Violet feels a little like an invasive species in her new community. She’s an outsider trying to set down new roots and to flourish will require taking some risks – the most challenging will be letting go of the past and embracing a new kind of future.
