Sundial lupine (Lupinus perennis) is a beautiful native plant that offers many benefits to the butterfly and bee gardener. It is a larval host plant for the Wild Indigo Duskywing, Columbine Duskywing, Persius Duskywing, Eastern Tailed-Blue, Silvery Blue, Frosted Elfin, Gray Hairstreak, Painted Lady, American Lady, Orange Sulphur, and Clouded Sulphur Butterflies. It has special value to native bees, especially mining, small carpenter, and mason bees, as well as bumblebees. It supports conservation biological control by attracting numerous beneficial insects, including ladybugs, soldier beetles, cuckoo bees, paper wasps, and thread-waisted wasps.

Lupine has declined considerably, and its loss is one of the major reasons that the Karner Blue Butterfly is now endangered. Unfortunately, Lupinus perennis is extremely difficult to grow even as an annual in my hot and humid zone 7a Maryland climate. Several of us in the Maryland/Virginia area split a couple of flats of Lupinus perennis, and none of us were able to keep it alive in our gardens. The Missouri Botanical Gardens has this to say of the commercially popular lupine hybrids: "Plants grow well in the cool summers of the West coast, Pacific Northwest, northern U.S., southern Canada and New England. Plants dislike the heat and humidity in USDA Zones 7-9 in the deep South."

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