Boronda and Prewitt Lupine Bloom

The mother of lupine blooms!  Around Mother’s Day of this year a prolific and memorable bloom of lupine peaked along the Big Sur coast. Locals told me that the last time the hillsides were covered with such density of lupine was back 1999, fifteen years prior. Perhaps the amazing display can be explained by the unprecedented weather conditions of the past year. A record dry 2013 was followed by an extremely dry January and February of this year. Hills that typically sprout with green grass by January remained golden well into February. In late February an impressive storm system dropped over a foot of rain along the Big Sur Coast. This storm only put a small dent in the ongoing exceptional drought conditions, but was enough to enable the lupine plants to sprout en masse.  My hypothesis is the antecedent dry conditions prevented grasses from germinating and when the heavy rains arrived in late February the lupine were able to proliferate without being crowded out by other grasses which were unable to take hold over the winter. Additional rainfall in late March provided just enough water to keep the lupine growing and by early May entire hillsides were covered with amazingly dense gardens of lupine.

The lupine bloom was not specific to a particular location along the coast as we enjoyed spectacular displays at Prewitt Ridge, Boronda Ridge and Dolan Ridge (Dolan lupine photos here). The meadows were generally found between 800 feet to 2,000 feet in elevation.  Prewitt Ridge was unique in that the lupine fields were interspersed with yellow poppies creating a fascinating mixture of colors in the foreground with Cone Peak, the King of the Big Sur Coast, looming in the background. Boronda Ridge featured perhaps the most impressive display with homogeneous, lush and dense lupine covering the spectacularly steep relief to the Pacific Ocean. The bloom was so prolific that the scent of lupine could be identified several hundred meters away from the flowers, a smell that became more pungent as one neared the meadows. This lupine bloom was an amazing sight to see and these photos are unaltered from what my camera captured.