Yellow lupin
Lupinus luteus
Family · Fabaceae · Poisonous
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The scented yellow spikes that fill sandy cornfields and pine woods in spring. It is a cousin of the bar-snack lupin, but the wild one is bitter and toxic until soaked for days.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Pine woods · Scrubland
Also known asEuropean yellow lupin
How to tell it
Wheel-like leaves divided into leaflets all radiating from one point like fingers. A spike of yellow flowers in tiers, strongly sweet-scented. Hairy pods.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
Green manure and fodder, which is why it is sown. The wild seed is only edible after a long soaking in running water, a tradition that still exists but is not improvised.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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