Lupinus leucophyllusDouglas ex Lindl.

velvet lupine

WFO wfo-0000174727 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Lupinus leucophyllus, photographed by Tom Wainwright
fig. a Tom Wainwright, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-06-03 / obs. 133958031

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 9 botanical countries

Regions where Lupinus leucophyllus is native: British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming British ColumbiaCaliforniaIdahoMontanaNevadaOregonUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Lupinus leucophyllus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
British Columbia BRC NORTHERN AMERICA
California CAL
Idaho IDA
Montana MNT
Nevada NEV
Oregon ORE
Utah UTA
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 106 in flower of 137 examined

Proportion of examined Lupinus leucophyllus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 2 too few examined
Feb 1 2 too few examined
Mar 4 6 67% 30% to 90%
Apr 19 28 68% 49% to 82%
May 42 43 98% 88% to 100%
Jun 21 23 91% 73% to 98%
Jul 9 10 90% 60% to 98%
Aug 3 3 too few examined
Sep 2 2 too few examined
Oct 3 5 60% 23% to 88%
Nov 2 9 22% 6% to 55%
Dec 0 4 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Lupinus leucophyllus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 106 of 137 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 24 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Lupinus agropyrophilus C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus andersonianus C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus canescens Howell
  • Lupinus canescens subsp. amblyophyllus B.L.Rob. ex Piper
  • Lupinus cyaneus Rydb.
  • Lupinus densiflorus Nutt.
  • Lupinus eatonanus C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus enodatus C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus equi-collis C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus erectus L.F.Hend.
  • Lupinus falsoerectus C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus forslingi C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus holosericeus var. amblyophyllus (B.L.Rob. ex Piper) C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus leucophyllus subsp. plumosus (Douglas ex Lindl.) B.L.Rob.
  • Lupinus leucophyllus var. leucophyllus
  • Lupinus leucophyllus var. plumosus (Douglas ex Lindl.) B.L.Rob. ex Piper
  • Lupinus leucophyllus var. retrorsus (L.F.Hend.) C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus leucophyllus var. tenuispicus (A.Nelson) C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus lysichitophilus C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus macrostachys Rydb.
  • Lupinus plumosus Douglas ex Lindl.
  • Lupinus retrorsus L.F.Hend.
  • Lupinus salicisocius C.P.Sm.
  • Lupinus tenuispicus A.Nelson

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.