I have been visiting the preserve more of less weekly to check on the emergence of Scrub Lupine seedlings in the various planting areas.
As of today, 21 seedlings have appeared and been flagged. There is also a single surviving seedling from 2023.
Most of them are in the older planting areas, portions of which are still more open and free of leaf litter than the third planting area. That area is badly overgrown and needs some serious management attention, though it is unclear how soon that will occur. It still contains some mature plants that appear to be healthy and should bloom again this spring if they survive.
I have visited the volunteer sights farther west a couple of times and so far have seen no seedlings.
That section has never been burned. It was not burned because the lupines were discovered there just before the planned landscape burn that occurred in 2008.
I was wondering whether fire would result in more seedlings popping up from the old seed bank in that section of the property. No Scrub Lupine emerged anywhere else on the property after the fire.
Blue Lupine did emerge a couple of times in the sandhill area where a relic population of Clitoria fragrans survives, but it was just a single plant and did not persist.
