Right now, lupines are adding intense flashes of color to meadows and hillsides around the Yukon. A favourite flower in many parts of the world, more than 300 species of lupines can be found growing wild everywhere from the arctic coast to the plains of Texas.

But in many parts of the world, lupines are spreading far beyond their natural habitat. They are being carefully tended by farmers, tested endlessly in agricultural departments, and even made into pasta.

In Australia, Britiain, the United States, South Africa, Chile and other countries, lupines are being grown as a cash crop, and interest in them is spreading.

While Lupinus arcticus, the common species in this part of the world, is toxic, plant breeders have developed strains of "sweet lupines" which can be fed to livestock and ground into flours.

Lupine seeds are very high in protein, second only to soy beans among the grain legumes. Like soybeans, they also fix nitrogen in soils, helping to improve them.

The positive attributes of lupines have been known for a long time, and this plant has a rich agricultural history. The poet Virgil mentioned lupines as a common crop as far back as 70 BC, and Greek and Persian writers also referred to lupines in the 1500s.

Arab conquerors spread lupines across northern Africa and into the Iberian peninsula and Frederick the Great brought them from Italy to northern Prussia.

But lupines -- even the non-poisonous ones -- always had one major drawback; their seeds are very bitter because of high alkaloid levels, and have to be soaked before they can be eaten.

Interest in lupines was revived just after World War I when some German botanists hosted a lupine dinner to show off the plant's versatility. The meal featured lupine steaks, liquor, and coffee, all served on a tablecloth made of lupine.

This event sparked a round of breeding efforts, and in the 1920s, "sweet" or low-alkaloid types of lupines were first introduced. One researcher suggests that this effort represents one of the first applications of Mendelian genetics to crop plants.

Cultivation of lupines has had an erratic history since then. For several decades they were grown as a cover crop in the southeastern United States cotton belt. By the 1960s, when cheap nitrogen fertilizer was readily available, cultivation of lupines ground to a halt.

Australians have been raising lupines as a legume since the 1960s, and about a million hectares are now planted in western Australia alone. Some of the crop is used for grazing but large amounts are exported to Europe and other countries for high protein animal feed.

In the 1980s American dairy farmers began searching for ways to cut their costs, bringing on a new wave of interest in lupines as a possible cheaper alternative to soybeans. They were also seen as a potential crop for areas where temperatures were too cold and the soils too sandy for growing soybeans.

The University of Minnesota ran extensive trials on lupines between 1988 and 1991, and interest in lupines remains high in that state. One specialty food company has developed pasta made from lupine flour.

Tony Hill, an agrologist with the Yukon agriculture branch, says there are no plans to cultivate lupines as a cash crop in the Yukon, but he saw yet another use of this versatile plant while visiting Iceland in 2001.

"In Iceland they have overgrazed the island so much that they have lost huge amounts of top soil; it looks like a moonscape in places. They have to revegetate huge areas, and they are using a few lupine species from Alaska in this massive reclamation project," he says.

"They have lost so much soil that they have to start with a legume that can fix nitrogen, and then the legumes contribute litter as they die."

The lupine seeds are broadcast from DC-3 airplanes over entire mountainsides and valleys. Hill says this project has been underway for more than a decade, but it will take a very long time to build up the lost top soil.

The reputation of lupines has come a long ways from the days when they were assigned their Latin name of "lupinus," meaning "of the wolf." In those days people mistakenly thought that lupines devoured all of the nutrients in the soil in which they grew.

Now concerns about genetically-engineered foods are renewing interest in lupines yet again. Many British farmers are looking for alternatives to the soy products commonly used for animal feed as they increasingly come from genetically engineered crops.

More than a hundred British farmers are now testing lupines as a guaranteed natural alternative, and if these trials go well, many British fields could one day be ablaze with lupines in the spring.

In the Yukon lupines will bloom for several more weeks, but here's a final reminder: look, but do not munch. Please keep in mind that the arctic lupines growing here are not the sweet variety; they are very high in alkaloids, and are not something that you want on your dinner plate.