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The One Native Lupine Mural, Bangor
One Native Lupine: A Bangor Mural With a Botanical Question
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The One Native Lupine mural turns a familiar Maine flower into a question. Its subject looks related to the purple flower spikes that many travelers associate with the state's roadsides, but the painting represents a different plant with a less familiar history. On Park Street in Bangor, a student-designed public artwork invites a closer look at the distance between something widely recognized and something that belongs to a place's native ecology.
Bangor Beautiful credits the design to Jaeda Grosjean, then a senior in Bangor High School's Visual and Performing Arts Academy. Students from Bangor and Brewer helped paint it with support from art teachers and the organization's board members. The commissioner describes three days of painting. That collaborative authorship matters when looking at the finished wall: a student's design became a substantial public image through the work of a wider group, rather than remaining an exercise seen only inside a classroom.
The organization records completion in fall 2023 and describes the mural as two stories high. Julia Bayly's original reporting places it on Park Street. Make the encounter from the ordinary pedestrian network, keeping building entrances and passing foot traffic clear. Its outdoor setting allows a visitor to begin with a straightforward visual response to a large painted flower, then follow the title into the botanical story. The mural is an artwork, so identifying a living plant requires more than matching it to a painted shape.
Its subject is wild or sundial lupine, Lupinus perennis. Maine's Natural Areas Program lists the species as possibly extirpated in the state. That means the concern is about its disappearance from Maine's wild flora, rather than the extinction of the species everywhere. The state account identifies dry open woods and clearings as habitat and records historical documentation from three Maine towns. Those details make the painting a representation of a particular botanical history instead of a generic symbol for summer.
The state's plant account also explains a useful distinction. Wild lupine generally has fewer, shorter leaflets than the introduced bigleaf lupine, Lupinus polyphyllus, which has become familiar in fields and along roadsides. Both can carry blue-purple to pale pink flowers and palmately divided leaves. Such similarities help explain how two plants with different histories become confused. Looking at the leaves in a botanical guide can reveal something that color alone does not resolve.
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens likewise emphasizes that the widespread bigleaf lupine comes from the West Coast. Its discussion challenges the easy assumption that a plant must be native simply because it appears frequently in a region's landscapes and art. Bring that question back to the wall: what does the mural's title ask viewers to reconsider? There is room here for both the pleasure of a floral image and an interest in how a place remembers its plants.
For a photographic record, include the wall's scale and one closer view of the painted subject from permitted public ground. Credit Grosjean's design and the student painting collaboration when sharing. This is a compact stop with an unusually specific idea behind it: public art can make an unfamiliar native plant visible and invite a more careful understanding of a familiar Maine scene.
Fun facts
- Jaeda Grosjean designed the mural as a Bangor High School senior.
- Students from Bangor and Brewer helped paint the work.
- Its subject is sundial lupine, Lupinus perennis.
Before you go
- Use public pedestrian space and keep entrances clear.
- Read the title alongside the depicted flower.
- Use a botanical reference when comparing living lupines.
- Credit the student designer and collaborative painting effort.
Capture
- Show the two-story scale before selecting a closer floral detail.
- Keep photographing to permitted public ground and leave the wall untouched.
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Social
The One Native Lupine mural asks viewers to look beyond a familiar roadside flower.
Jaeda Grosjean designed the work while a Bangor High School senior.
Bangor and Brewer students helped bring the design onto a public-facing wall.
The commissioner records the mural’s completion in fall 2023.
Its botanical subject is Lupinus perennis, also called sundial lupine.
Maine’s native wild lupine and the introduced bigleaf lupine have different histories.
Flower color alone does not settle a plant’s identity. Leaves offer other clues.
What familiar landscape image would make you curious about its native history?
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