Poisonous beauty

Once I bought small lupin plants to add them to my flower bed, they are such lovely flowers. But soon I found out that they are not only lovely-looking but also quickly-spreading and deep-rooting. If you don’t keep them at bay, they shamelessly displace other more modest plants.

The other day I read an interesting and actually quite alarming article describing how mountain meadows in the national park Giant Mountains (Krkonoše) get overgrown with lupins preventing the smaller original plants from thriving and rendering the hay worthless because of their poisonous properties.

Would you believe that only 100 grams of lupin seeds can poison a sheep? If I just imagine how many seeds produces each and every one of those beautiful flowers…

So while trying to keep the beauty in my garden but limiting its treacherous quality, I diligently weed new seedlings and cut the flowers before the seeds grow ripe.

Because as my humble gardening has taught me, lupins are not the only flowers by far that can get out of hand and one needs to tread carefully in many gardening regards anyway.

And well, isn’t it actually somewhat surprising that one can buy a plant, which is classified as invasive in the country, quite freely in every gardening centre?