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Plant Brought From Alaska Spreads Across Iceland’s Poor Soils, Helps Curb Desertification and Reforest the Country, but Threatens Native Ecosystems and Rekindles the Debate on How Far We Should Go to “Save Nature”
The contrast is brutal. On one side, stretches of bare, rocky soil, battered by the wind. On the other, entire strips of intense purple covering old areas of sand and gravel. It is here, in Iceland’s expanding deserts, that an exotic plant has become a symbol of one of the most uncomfortable environmental debates of our time: using an invasive species to curb desertification and restore forests, even at the expense of native biodiversity.
The protagonist of this story is Lupinus nootkatensis, the Alaska lupine. In just a few decades, it has transformed from two spoonfuls of seeds brought from Alaska to spreading across entire landscapes, painting slopes purple, fertilizing dead soils, and at the same time raising alarms among ecologists, ornithologists, and advocates for the island’s original habitats.
The dilemma is straightforward: to what extent is it worth combating desertification based on a species that may dominate everything around it?
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Spectacular Iceland, But Rapidly Desertifying
Iceland projects an image of untouched landscapes, volcanoes, glaciers, and green fields to the world. The ecological reality is much harsher.
A large part of the country is, in fact, a mosaic of degraded soils, cold deserts, and areas actively undergoing desertification.
Centuries of deforestation, overgrazing, and erosion have stripped much of the island’s original vegetation. In many places, what remains is poor, rocky, unstable soil, incapable of holding water or nourishing more demanding plants.
The Icelandic deserts continue to expand day by day, pushed by wind, rain, and lack of vegetation cover.
It is in this scenario that the lupine emerges as a radical solution. While many native species struggle to establish themselves in these destroyed soils, the purple plant does the exact opposite: it occupies first what everything else rejects.
From Two Spoonfuls of Seeds to the Purple Explosion in the Deserts
The story begins in 1945. After a trip to Alaska, Hákon Bjarnason, then director of the Icelandic Forestry Service, returned home with something seemingly insignificant: two spoonfuls of Lupinus nootkatensis seeds.
The idea was both simple and ambitious: to use the plant as a restoration tool in poor soils.
Bjarnason knew that the lupine was a leguminous species and nitrogen-fixing, meaning it could enrich the soil by associating its roots with bacteria that draw nitrogen from the air and deposit it into the ground.
In a country with depleted soils and increasing desertification, the promise was tempting: a self-fertilizing plant that grows in sand and gravel, retains soil, and prepares the ground for other species.
For decades, the lupine was welcomed with open arms in Iceland. It was seen as an ally of restoration, cheaper than grass planting, beautiful in the landscape, and effective in areas where almost nothing grew.
There was even a door-to-door campaign with small “elves” containing a birch seed and a lupine seed inside to encourage people to plant both together.
But this initial enthusiasm had a blind spot: no one knew for sure what would happen when such an aggressive species encountered a whole country filled with fragile, desertified soils and little competition.
How the Purple Plant Curb Desertification in Practice
Today, just look at a typical transition: on one side, a cold desert of sand and stone; on the other, a dense strip of lupine advancing year after year. In many areas, it is literally the only plant capable of reclaiming the ground.
Lupinus nootkatensis has a set of characteristics that make it perfect for curbing desertification:
- Grows in sandy, rocky, and even bare gravel soils.
- Can reach up to 1.20 m in height and live for up to 20 years.
- A single individual with about 25 flowering stems can produce thousands of seeds in one season.
- On flat surfaces, the lupine carpet advances between 1 and 3 meters per year, potentially going even further on sloped areas, carried by wind and water.
As it establishes itself, the plant changes the soil from the inside out. The root system, associated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, injects fertility where there was practically zero life before. Organic matter increases, soil structure improves, and moisture is better retained.
This new environment begins to attract other players in the ecological chain. Invertebrates like earthworms return, transforming debris into humus, the dark, rich fraction of the soil.
This humus further improves fertility, feeds a web of microorganisms, and paves the way for grasses, shrubs, and, in some cases, trees.
At the surface, the lupine areas become feeding points for birds that benefit from the abundance of invertebrates, and the landscape, once gray or brown, gains a purple carpet visible from afar. This is why many Icelanders and tourists see the plant as a symbol of hope against desertification.
The Other Side: When Combating Desertification Threatens Native Nature
If the story ended here, the lupine would be almost unanimous. But it doesn’t end there. The same aggressiveness that allows the plant to face desertification and colonize deserts makes it a powerful invader in sensitive native ecosystems.
Aerial images show that the lupine now covers about 0.4% of the Earth’s surface in Iceland. At first glance, this seems small.
But the number is alarming when compared to another figure: only about 1.5% of the country is covered by forests. If nothing is done, the plant’s growth curve is likely to be exponential, especially given its efficient reproductive capabilities.
The most concerning impact falls on native habitats such as wetlands and low shrub heaths, where species like blueberries and other typical Icelandic plants thrive. These environments are important not only for their flora but also for the fauna they support.
One of the most cited examples is the European Golden Plover, a migratory bird beloved by Icelanders, whose annual arrival symbolically marks the beginning of summer.
With the expansion of lupine over the old heaths and low shrub fields, nesting areas are being taken over by the purple carpet, altering the available habitat pattern for the species.
In simple terms, by curbing desertification with lupine, Iceland risks losing part of its native vegetation and the ecosystems that define the island’s ecological identity. What was a restoration tool now becomes, at the same time, a pressure factor on the original biodiversity.
Between Restoration and Domination: The Dilemma of the “Useful” Invasive Species
The big question that ecologists and managers are trying to answer today is no longer whether the lupine is good or bad, but how to coexist with an invasive species that is already deeply embedded in the landscape and is simultaneously an ally against desertification and a threat to native ecosystems.
There is an emerging pragmatic consensus in many circles:
- The lupine is unlikely to be eradicated from Iceland. The dispersal has already happened; the seeds are in the soil, and total control would be unrealistic.
- It is extremely valuable in areas of severe desertification, where practically no native species can establish themselves alone.
- At the same time, it needs to be strictly controlled in areas of high ecological value, such as sensitive native plant habitats and key areas for birds like the golden plover.
In practice, this means using the plant strategically, as a temporary restoration tool in deserts and heavily degraded soils, while also investing in monitoring, containment, and, when necessary, removal in areas that still harbor well-structured native vegetation.
The case of the lupine also exposes a greater discomfort: the future of restoration in a rapidly desertifying planet may depend, in some places, on species that were not “rightfully” there in the past.
And this forces entire societies to rethink what “original nature” means in a deeply modified world.
Desertification, Restoration, and the Future of Icelandic Landscapes
The advance of deserts in Iceland is real, and Lupinus nootkatensis shows, in practice, that it is possible to curb desertification and create fertile soil where there was once only gravel and sand.
At the same time, the potential price is high: loss of native habitats, simplification of landscapes, and dependency on an invasive species to support part of the recovery.
The discussion about the lupine is, in fact, a reflection of something larger. In a world where desertification is growing, the climate is changing, and entire ecosystems are collapsing, it is likely that this type of dilemma will become increasingly common.
Between acting with imperfect tools or not acting and watching degradation advance, the choice is rarely simple.
For Iceland, the challenge now is to find a balance between curbing desertification, restoring forests, and protecting what remains of its native flora and fauna, without turning the lupine’s purple into the new dominant color of the entire landscape.
In your place, would you prioritize combating desertification using lupine, even with the risk to native species, or would you defend limiting the use of the invasive plant as much as possible to protect what remains of the original ecosystems?
Why protected the desert and not that lovely plant ?
Acredito se houver uma cultura desta invasora, controlada, monitorada, haverá sim possibilidades de recuperar áreas degradadas, enquanto outras parcelas de solo, continuarão sua dinâmica normal. Isto engloba planejamento, controle, monitoramento, emprego de tecnologias, manutenção e tudo que a agricultura dispõe hoje em dia.
Grato!
Bandeira
Se a desertificação avançar quem vai haver alguma coisa nativa ?