LUPINE, in botany: A genus of the decandria order, belonging to the diadelphia class of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 3rd order, Papilionaceae. The calyx is bilabiated; there are five oblong and five roundish anthers; the legumen is coriaceous. There are seven species, fix of them hardy herbaceous flowery annuals, and one perennial, rising with upright stalks from one to three or four feet high, ornamented with digitate or fingered leaves, and terminated by long whorled spikes of papilionaceous flowers, white, blue, yellow, and rose-coloured. They are all easily raised from seed; and succeed in any open borders, where they make a fine variety.

The seeds of the white lupine, which have a leguminous taste accompanied with a disagreeable bitter one, are said to be anthelmintic, both internally taken, and applied externally. Cæsar Hoffmann cautions against their external use, and tells us (from one of the Arabian writers) that they have sometimes occasioned death. Simon Pauli also says, that he saw a boy of eight or ten years of age, after taking a dram of these seeds in powder, seized with exquisite pains in the abdomen, a difficulty of respiration, and almost total loss of voice; and that he was relieved from these complaints by a glyster of milk and sugar, which brought away a vast quantity of worms. But Mr Geoffroy observes, very justly, that either these symptoms were owing to the worms, and not to the medicine; or that these seeds, if they have any noxious quality, lose it with their bitterness in boiling; since they were commonly used among the Greeks as food, and recommended by Galen as very wholesome.