in Thoreau’s Journal:

The lupine is now in its glory.

It is the more important because it occurs in such extensive patches even an acre or more together––and of such a pleasing variety of colors, purple-pink or lilac–and white–especially with the sun on it, when the transparency of the flower makes its color changeable.

It paints a whole hill side with its blue–making such a field––(if not meadow) as Proserpine might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be covered with dew drops– Such a profession of the heavenly–the elysian color–as if these were the elysian fields. They say the seeds look like babies’ faces and hence the flower is so named. No other flowers exhibit so much blue. That is the value of the lupine. The earth is blued with them. Yet a third of a mile distant I do not detect their color on the hill side– Perchance because it is the color of the air. It is not distinct enough.

You passed along here perchance a fortnight ago & the hill-side was comparatively barren––but now you come & these glorious redeemers appear to have flashed out here all at once. Who planted the seeds of lupines in the barren soil? Who watereth the lupines in the fields?