By Russel Barsh, Director of Kwiaht
An uncommon wildflower with an unusual island story
Extensively disturbed and weedy, Cattle Point supports a showy native wildflower that thrives nowhere else in the San Juan Islands, and only patchily around the shores of the Salish Sea as a whole: Seashore Lupine, Lupinus littoralis, which forms lush, dense mats of foliage clinging to the bluff edge, and clusters of slipper-shaped purplish blue to white flowers in late April to May.
Seashore Lupine is a perennial typically found in well-drained coastal sand dunes and sandy bluffs with little or no organic matter. It is a legume in the “pea family” (Fabaceae) and like other legumes, it fixes nitrogen with the help of cyanobacterial partners that grow small nodules (rhizobia) on it roots. Most lupin species also form mycorrhizal partnerships that enhance phosphorus absorption in nutrient-poor environments such as dunes, and may serve other functions as well, such as water retention.
Because they grow deep taproots, Seashore Lupines help stabilize eroding shorelines. At Cattle Point, this function is shared with Yellow Sand Verbena (Abronia latifolia). Both Seashore Lupine and Yellow Sand Verbena produce mats of stems that enhance their stabilizing function. Landward of these species at Cattle Point you will see lawns of Scouring Rush (Equisetum hyemale), another native perennial that spreads by means of a web of fibrous rhizomes, which also helps stabilize dunes.
In addition to its role in slowing dune erosion, Seashore Lupines are the larval food for the lovely Silvery Blue butterfly, Glaucopsyche ligdamus, one of several medium sized blue butterflies you are likely to see in spring and early summer at Cattle Point.
Although they are eaten by butterflies, Seashore Lupines at Cattle Point lupines are mainly pollinated by bumblebees, several species of which nest in the area. Legumes form tightly folded flowers that must be opened before they can be entered. Bumblebees are among the strongest and most manipulative of our bees, and very clever at puzzles like opening the flowers of legumes, native Salish Sea orchids, and many recently garden ornamentals.
Like other legumes, Seashore Lupines produce pods filled with small, bean-like seeds. Unlike garden peas, however, Seashore Lupine seeds are rich in alkaloids, bitter and mildly toxic. They have never been used as human food, although some other lupine species in Eurasia and the Americas were cultivated for their seeds several thousand years ago. Rather, the roots of Seashore Lupine were reportedly roasted, pounded and eaten by Native peoples of the lower Columbia River and Washington Coast—as well as the Haida of Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands), more than 500 miles to the north.
There is, indeed, a small disjunct occurrence of Seashore Lupines in Haida Gwaii. How did this dune-loving plant make the 500-mile journey? It’s not unlikely that Haida summer raising parties, which pirated goods and people from western Washington for centuries, brought back this pretty edible plant, as they brought back some of the potatoes that were grown by Coast Salish villagers decades before the arrival of Spanish and British explorers in the 1790s.
Cattle Point, or Tl’ikweneng (“sticking out”) in the indigenous Lekweneng language spoken by Samish, Saanich and Lummi, and Fish Creek (Xwshé7neng), were the home of “Captain George” (Kwaya7nexw), son of a Samish mother and S’Klallam father, Chtsí7yem. Father and son served as watchmen for the Samish reef-net fisheries at Davis Bay, Long Island and Iceberg Point on Lopez Island within plain sight of Cattle Point. The panoramic view from Cattle Point enabled them to warn the hundreds of reef-net fishers and their families of the approach of Haida raiding parties, using bonfire signals.
The Seashore Lupines of Cattle Point are living mementos of this connection between San Juan Island and Haida Gwaii.
