Large-leaved lupine

These values are location-based: this location's current hardiness is the baseline, and the 2050 value is a projected future climate for this same location.

In plain terms: This location has cold winters. Its winters are projected to keep warming through 2050.

Well-suited today and still thriving in 2050.

Common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens)

The Xerces Society, via the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, rates this lupine of special value to bumble bees without naming a species, and Wikipedia says its flowers are mostly visited by bumblebees. Where it is grown or has escaped in eastern North America, the common eastern bumblebee is a likely visitor.

Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)

Wikipedia says the flowers are mostly visited by bumblebees, and Plants For A Future records bee pollination, without naming a species. In European gardens, where it is widely grown and naturalised, the buff-tailed bumblebee is a likely visitor.

Native across 6 US states + 2 CA provinces; naturalized in 4 US states.

Naturally belongs in 19 ecoregions - its native range crosses a state or province each one spans (not necessarily this exact habitat).

Plants For A Future's reading of USDA hardiness zones 5 to 9 is the only zone range any source states for this species, so this record publishes 5a-9b on that one source; neither NC State Extension nor the Missouri Botanical Garden profiles it. Its own text calls the plant hardy to its UK zone 3, which points to more cold tolerance than zone 5, and Wikipedia says the garden lupines bred from it withstand frost to at least -13°F. Treat the cold edge as conservative: the species grows wild in Alaska and Alberta.

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center gives its native range as the Coast Ranges from California to Alaska and, mainly in the mountains, east to Alberta and Colorado: Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, with Alberta and British Columbia. GRIN Taxonomy (USDA Agricultural Research Service) gives the same western range and lists it as cultivated and naturalized in Europe and eastern Canada.

The native range here is taken from Kew's World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), the dataset POWO publishes: Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington in the west, and also Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ontario, Quebec, Vermont and Wisconsin. Those eastern listings conflict with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, GRIN Taxonomy and the Wisconsin DNR, which treat it as western only, and NatureServe ranks it exotic in Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, Labrador, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec. This record treats it as a western native and an introduced plant in the East, so its native-range map shows the eight western areas only.

WCVP records it as introduced across much of the cooler world: Illinois, Maryland, Labrador and Newfoundland; Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the northwestern Balkans, Ukraine, Belarus and European Russia; Siberia, the Russian Far East, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, the Transcaucasus, Pakistan and Bangladesh; southern Argentina and Chile; New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia; and both islands of New Zealand. The EPPO Global Database likewise lists it as introduced in Europe, Siberia, Central Asia, Mongolia, the southern cone of South America and Australia, and as introduced and invasive in Central Russia. The New Zealand Plant Conservation Network records it naturalised there since 1958 and now seriously invasive in South Canterbury, in gravel riverbeds and on roadsides, and names it on the 2024 Department of Conservation list of environmental weeds. Plants For A Future, which calls it a garden escape in Britain, rates its weed potential as no; this record follows the invasive-species sources.

Flowering time depends on climate and source. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center gives May, Plants For A Future late spring to early summer in one place and July to August in another, and the Wisconsin DNR midsummer; in New Zealand it flowers from September to February.