Lupine’s splendor is much to be enjoyed. There is the attraction of the flowers, erect and purple as they spring forth in early summer and the water magic of dewy diamond drops in the leave’s center. It seems all the more romantic to think of ingesting the seeds held within fuzzy pea pods (ok that all sounds more sexier than I’d intended- Lupine erotica anyone?!🤣)
I was tempted to try the seeds when I was younger- but I remember my mother telling me,
DO NOT eat lupine seeds because they are POISONOUS.
So I took that as that, and whenever I found myself curious about the seeds, I’d hear her voice of warning in my head and steer clear of them. I wouldn’t even play with them.
However, this summer I was awestruck when someone told me that the seeds are, apparently, a delicacy in Italy. This was contrary to my mother’s forbidding so I opened my Lupine curiosity back up and asked in an Alaskan Harvesters Facebook group about “potential edibility”, and “did we have any edible Lupines up here in the north?”
The responses ranged from gentle warnings to be careful of poison, to HARD NOs that suggested that the question itself was dangerous. One comment delighted me though, a woman shared she’d often eaten Lupine seeds in summers as a kid. She hadn’t been aware they were “poisonous”, and she's been just fine.
The consensus in my mind is still of the unknown: There are Lupines with poisonous compounds in Alaska, but due to cross breeding it is difficult to know how poisonous a lupine seed is without somehow testing for toxicity. The question of Lupine seeds rings true to a greater reality- often times the questions we ask lead us to greater wondering, and we realize there is so much more we don’t know. I'm glad to have opened up to Lupine seeds again, rather than keeping them locked in a box labeled poisonous, therefore off-limits. I don’t see them as blanket-statement taboo anymore.
This Lupine wondering reminded me of a mushroom course I took years ago. The teacher, a university mycologist, said he NEVER consumed mushrooms. He had no interest for mushrooms in culinary arts and no interest in mushrooms to induce levity.
He had seen foragers dog-sick after frying up a poisonous look-alike, or drinking too soon after eating the mushroom that has a sickening effect with alcohol, or unexpectedly becoming ill from a mushroom that was known to be perfectly edible and delicious. It’s too much a game of uncertainty for him to play.
HOWEVER, this man was willing to *taste* any mushroom. From white angel-of-death Amanitas to mysterious LBMs (little brown mushrooms). He’d take a nibble and get the taste of the mushroom, then spit it all out. So while he had sampled many many mushrooms to know their flavors, he never swallowed them. Any components that may be “poisonous” would have no effect.
This paradox really struck me- it seems comical to make a strict boundary about no consumption of mushrooms, but then to be willing to nibble on any and all! It makes me smile in the same way as I did when I read this woman’s comment about growing up eating Lupine seeds.
What is poison? And why do we often let the label “poisonous” stop us from getting to know a mushroom or plant?
It’s too partisan to say “this is safe” so I will get to know it, and “this is poisonous” so I will avoid it at all costs.
Perhaps I will nibble the Lupine seed.
