BANGOR (AP) – Weed whackers went silent where lupines grow in Acadia National Park as fans of the flowers that color the countryside in Maine prepared to gather in another Down East location for their annual festival.

It seems hard to imagine a fuss over the familiar flower in a state that has a festival in its honor.

“I think they’re beautiful,” said Anne Beerits, an organizer of this weekend’s Deer Isle-Stonington Lupine Festival.

“And they have a kind of a Maine mystique. … They’re sort of an harbinger of early summer, and I think for people that live in seasonal communities like this, everyone really welcomes any harbinger of warm weather and spring,” she said Friday.

But in Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, the purple, blue and pink flowered plants aren’t held in such high esteem.

While familiar in Maine as its rocky shore and lobsters, the lupine is from away. A non-native species, it was introduced years ago as a landscaping plant and has never left. A strain of lupine that was native to Maine is extinct, said David Manski, Acadia’s chief of resource management.

“We’re dealing with a showy, beautiful plant that’s an icon of the state of Maine, but it doesn’t really belong here,” Manski said. “It has its place and that’s not Acadia.”

Two weeks ago, park botanists fired up their weed whackers and went at the lupines growing at the edge of the coastal preserve.

But seeing the surprised reactions of park visitors and island residents, park officials curtailed their containment program, at least for the time being.

“There were very strong feelings,” Manski said. “We certainly were caught off guard … Obviously, people love lupines, and with good reason, but in a national park, lupines are not part of the natural landscape.”

Manski acknowledged that park officials want to learn more about the ecological effects of lupines.

Lupines are one of more than 200 non-native plants that live on the Mount Desert Island, almost a quarter of the total number of plant species. While some don’t compete with native plant species, others, like the aggressive wetland plant purple loosestrife, do.

“I would like to hear all the information on the case to eradicate lupine,” Judd said. “We all love the beautiful blue color and the stands we see along the road and the hillside.”

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