Classification

Classifications of organisms are made based on groupings of organisms with similar characteristics. Scientists have predicted evolutionary changes in history and often create phylogentic trees illistrating these predictions. There are three major domains and each domain has subsets and it goes on until the genus species is named. Listed, are each of the classifications of Lupinus bicolor and the reasons or characteristics of the grouping.
 
Domain: Eukaryote
L. bicolor is a multi-cellular organism containing mitochondria and other organelles. The group contains fungus such as Jelly Ear Mushroom, animals like the Great Sea Horse, and plants like the Purple Coneflower.
 
Kingdom: Plantae
This organismal group contains the land plants. The land plants all have chloroplasts and photosynthesize to fix carbon into sugar. An organism that shares a kindom with L. bicolor but not a phylum are the ferns, an example would be the Licorice Fern.
 
Phylum: Spermatophyta
This phylum consists of the seed plants and vascular tissues. The L. bicolor contains xylem and phloem, a root system, stem, leaves, and also produces sperm and egg to form seeds for its reproduction. An example of another organism in this phylum would be the Sweet Orange as well as the Pomegranate Tree.
 
Division: Magnoliophyta (flowering plants)
Not only do these plants produce seeds, but the method of seed production in via a flowering structure as well as a fruit. The same flower contains both the structures to produce egg and sperm. The L. bicolor produces a fruit, specifically a pod of seeds. Another member of Magnoliophyta is the sunflower.
 
Class: Magnoliopsida
Magnoliopsida, or commonly called eudicot, refers to one of the two classes of flowering plants, monocots and eudicots. Being a dicot, such as the L. bicolor, is categorized by structural characteristics, these characteristics are listed in Table 1 (UMPC 2013). Another example of a Eudicot would be the Silver Maple and the common Blue Violet. Both of these organisms share the traits of pollen structure, reticulated leaf veins and the number of cotyledons of their embryo.

Order: Fabales
This order holds all the legumes, those with and without secondary growth, meaning woody growth. Figure 1 shows the families of the Fabales order. There are four listed, the Fabaceae (to which Lupinus bicolor belongs) the Quillajaceae, the Polygalaceae, and the Surianaceae. All except the Fabaceae have woody growth form. The Fabaceae is the largest family with up to 20,000 species, with Polygalaceae being the second largest containing up to 1,000 species (Berry et al. 2013).

Figure 1. The tree above depicts an evolutionary hypothesis of the differentiation between the families of the Fabales order. The two largest families are hypothesized to have branched off first, with the smaller families branching later with less diversity.

Family: Fabaceae
The Fabaceae also known as Papilionaceae are a group of legumes commonly referred to as the pea family. This group of plants have been categorized by their non woody growth, uncommon of the dicots. They are also grouped by their bilateral flowers, these resemble butterfly wings, giving rise to the name “papilionaceae” off of the Latin word papilio meaning butterfly (Berry et al. 2013). An ecologically valuable trait of the Fabaceae is their symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria, which increases the nitrogen content of soil (Berry et al. 2013).
 
Genus: Lupinus L.
 
Species: Lupinus bicolor
There was an evolutionary separation of the L. bicolor from other members of the genus Lupinus, these differences range from habitat of the plant to physical characteristics such as size and form. One specific separation of the L. bicolor is that it is an annual, a trait that it shares with an old common ancestor of the Lupines. Yet, as shown in Figure 2, this trait was lost for a while but reemerged with L. bicolor and very close relatives. Another specific characteristic of L. bicolor that differentiates it from some other Lupines is the elevation at which it grows, as shown in Figure 1. This species grows at elevations up to 2000 meters, while the L. pachylobus, a close relative, can only grow at about 1000 meters elevation (Drummond 2008).

Figure 2. A tree depicting the evolutionary relationship, in regard to the characteristic of being an annual or perennial, of various species of Lupines.

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