Lupinus microcarpus

Lupinus microcarpus Sims (Fabaceae), the chick lupine or wide-bannered lupine, is a winter-annual herb native to the Pacific slope of North and South America, ranging from southern Washington and Oregon south through California and Baja California and disjunctly to central Chile and Argentina. Plants produce one to several erect, hollow stems 10-80 cm tall, clothed with appressed silky hairs. Leaves are palmately compound on long petioles, with five to nine oblanceolate leaflets 1-4 cm long, green above and silvery-pubescent beneath. Whorled spike-like racemes 5-20 cm long carry showy pea-like flowers 8-15 mm long that range from violet, lavender and pink to yellow or nearly white, with the standard often bearing a darker eye. Fruits are short, densely hairy pods 1-2 cm long containing two to four mottled seeds. It is a common spring annual of grasslands, open hillsides, vernal-pool margins, roadsides and disturbed sandy or clay soils below 1500 m elevation.