Lupinus luteus (European yellow lupine)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lupinus luteus, photographed by Duarte Frade — fig. a Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-18 / obs. 189068681

Lupinus luteus, photographed by Elizabete Marchante — fig. b Elizabete Marchante, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188546175

Lupinus luteus, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. d Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 177024624

Lupinus luteus, photographed by linkie — fig. f linkie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165637695

Lupinus luteus, photographed by Jeremy Gilmore — fig. g Jeremy Gilmore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158185800

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 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Lupinus luteus, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Corse	COR	EUROPE
Italy	ITA
Portugal	POR
Sardegna	SAR
Sicilia	SIC
Spain	SPA

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 206 in flower of 216 examined

100%

98%

99%

83%

67%

100%

Proportion of examined Lupinus luteus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	1	1	too few examined
Feb	12	12	100%	76% to 100%
Mar	58	59	98%	91% to 100%
Apr	91	92	99%	94% to 100%
May	19	23	83%	63% to 93%
Jun	4	6	67%	30% to 90%
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	2	3	too few examined
Sep	10	10	100%	72% to 100%
Oct	7	7	100%	65% to 100%
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	2	3	too few examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Lupinus luteus 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. 206 of 216 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 30 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 luteus f. bernatzkayae Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus f. compactus Kazim. & Kaz.
Lupinus luteus f. golovczenkoi Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus f. lukasheviczii Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus f. ucrainicus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus f. volovnenkoae Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus subsp. orientalis Kazim. & Kaz.
Lupinus luteus subvar. chloroticus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus subvar. leucospermus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus subvar. ochroleucus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus subvar. taranuchoi Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. albicans Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. arcellus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. aurantiacus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. aureus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. citrinus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. cremeus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. croceus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. kazimierskii Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. leucospermus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. maculosus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. melanospermus Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. niger Kurl. & Stank.
Lupinus luteus var. ochroleucus Kurl. & Stank.

and 6 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.