Lupinus poisonous?

[Pen]

I have wild rabbits roaming my yard this winter, they've eaten all my lupin seedlings -- which is okay with me. Are rabbits immune to the poison or is lupins' toxicity a myth?

[Timothy]

As far as MRS.M.Grieve is concerned, the anwser is no. Follow this and read for your self:

your day.

[Timothy]

As far as MRS.M.Grieve is concerned, the anwser is no. Follow this and read for your self:

your day.

[Stephen Henning]

Seeds, pods & young leaves are very poisonous.  Risk of poisoning is low due to unpalatability of the toxic Lupins. No known treatment and the effects are generally reversible. The poison is quinolizidine alkaloids. However, even bitter lupin can be made edible with a debitering process that involves soaking and rinsing. Such seed are actually used to make flour for pasta, dairy product substitutes and soy sauce. Rodent and some other animals seem to tolerate the poison fairly well, much better than humans.

[Timothy]

After reviewing Mr.Henning's post, I dug a bit deeper into this. I really hate to spread incorrect/false information, so I googled over an hour on this subject (besides, it's starting to snow again... nothing better to do eh?)

As far as I can see, it's a bit of a sticky question. Yes and no or depends would be my new answer. Agirculture and Agri-Food Canada states it best:

"Because of the difficulty in identifying lupines, literature reports of poisonous species are difficult to interpret. Moreover, under varying seasonal and edaphic conditions, the toxicity of particular plants can change, making prediction of poisoning uncertain. Consequently, all lupine species in Canada must be considered potentially poisonous, but only four species are included in this inventory."

So if you have the complete latin name of your lupin, then we would be able to determine for sure.

[Salty Thumb]

Timothy wrote in news:1105488334.4e11b3f1015552936403ad4ca0d36a08@teranews:

Maybe the rabbits just have enough sense to eat them when they are not poisonous.

[Timothy]

This quite possible... or they're starving and they'll eat anything at the moment. Or this lupin is not poisonous or less poisonous due to the season..etc. It's really hard to say. Guess Pen should keep an eye out for sick/dead rabbits.

[bamboo]

Sometimes it takes a bit of growth to make and store plant toxins in the tissues so perhaps these rabbits were ok. Also because the rabbits were not confined with the plants and have a wide and varied diet they probably escaped harm. When you pen animals up with toxic plants is when you have the most poisonings because after they graze their favored plants they have nothing left and tend to consume a large dose of the toxic plants. A bite of this and a bite of that is far less dangerous than all of one or another plant at a time. Lupins are not good for cattle.

[Pen]

Thank you, Timothy, for the links. Specifically, the lupins that were eaten were the 'Russel hybrids'.

Lupinus perennis seedlings were left alone, they were planted a month earlier. I guess the plants do need more time to become poisonous. The rabbits seem healthy, still avoiding a neighbour's cat. :)

[Timothy]

If there's anything out there that will endanger the rabbits, the cats are it for sure. Thanks for bringing up the Lupin question, I learned a lot. Have a good day