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Lupinus luteus
Also called Yellow lupin, Annual Yellow Lupin, Yellow Lupine, Yellow Sweet Lupin
Lupinus luteus is an annual yellow-flowered lupin native to the western Mediterranean, grown for its seeds, forage, and ornamental flowers. It thrives in mild, sandy or volcanic soils with plenty of sun.
Lupinus luteus is known as annual yellow-lupin, European yellow lupin or yellow lupin. It is native to the western Mediterranean region from Portugal east to Italy. It is an annual plant growing to around 80 cm tall with hairy stems. The leaves are palmately compound, with 7–11 leaflets, the leaflets 6 cm long by 12 mm broad. The flower are bright yellow, 13–16 mm long, borne on spikes are not continuous, but in regularly spaced verticillasters on the stem.
It occurs on mild sandy and volcanic soils. As a wild plant, it is widespread over the coastal area in the western part of the Iberian Peninsula, on the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily and in Southern Italy. It has become naturalised in northwest Africa in Morocco, Tunisia, in Europe widely, and in Algeria, Syria, Israel and Lebanon in southwest Asia, and more distantly also in Ethiopia, India, and elsewhere. It is cultivated in Northern Europe, including Belarus and Ukraine as well as, on a smaller scale, in Western Australia and South Africa.
The yellow seeds, known as lupin beans, were once a common food of the Mediterranean basin. Today they are primarily eaten as a pickled snack food, and cultivated to feed livestock and poultry. It is also used as an ornamental plant.
Silver lupine · White Lupin · Lupinus anatolicus · Yellow bush lupine · Miniature lupine · Chick Lupine · Tarwi · Nootka lupine · Bigleaf lupine · Texas bluebonnet · Hollowleaf annual lupine · Texas lupine
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lupinus luteus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
