Valley or chick lupine is a stout-stemmed annual with a ± shaggy pubescence of spreading or retrorse hairs and alternate, palmately-compound leaves made up of 5-11 (generally 9) oblanceolate leaflets with a glabrous upper surface.  The flowers are white to dark yellow, or pink to rose, and are in whorls on terminal racemes.  The bracts are persistant and reflexed during flowering, the whorls are crowded or not, and the upper keel margins are ciliate.  The fruit pod is a hairy ovoid to 5/8" long , erect to spreading, with two tan to brown seeds.  This lupine is an abundant species in open and disturbed areas, valley grassland, coastal sage scrub, chaparral and oak woodland below about 2500' and blooms from April to May.  The first photo was taken in the Antelope Valley and the second and third pictures are from the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Preserve.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Lupinus 2) microcarpus.
Pronunciation: loo-PIE-nus my-kro-KAR-pus.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.