Fabaceae

During late spring in the Sage Hills, the wide open sunny slopes are colored with a blue-to-purple hue. The flowers are lupines, a common shrub-steppe wildflower. Lupine can be recognized by its tall, spike-like cluster of blossoms. The flower itself has two lips that look, from the side view, like a parrot’s beak.

This low-growing, cushion-like plant has white, pink, or purple flowers that mature and produce distinctive white woolly seed pods. The stems are only two to four inches long. The leaves are the gray-green color of sagebrush. Like all legumes, locoweed helps to fix nitrogen in the soil.