Why the name, “Fender’s Blue”?

(Photo of the Fender's Blue Butterfly by Dai Crisp)

Wondering where we get our business name? Here’s the story: Decorating the hillside just above the hemp farm is the Kincaid’s lupine, a native Oregon flower that serves as a host plant for Fender’s Blue butterflies. Our business is named after these beautiful, endangered species of butterflies that community members around the Philomath area have been committed to protecting for many years, in concert with the incredible Institute for Applied Ecology in Corvallis, Oregon. Our goal is to help continue this legacy of ecological stewardship. 

The Fender’s Blue species was first documented in the 1920s. A biologist named Ralph Macy named the butterfly after his friend, Kenneth Fender, an entomologist local to the Willamette Valley. Between the 1930s and 1989, the Fender’s Blue butterfly was not seen and thought to be extinct until small populations were rediscovered in 1989. 

In March of 2022, our co-founder, Aaron, volunteered with the Institute for Applied Ecology in Philomath, Oregon to plant Kincaid’s lupines in a protected area of the valley. This was part of a greater effort to create a corridor of lupines to increase the count of the Fender’s Blue butterflies.

(Photo to the left of Kincaid's lupine prepared to be planted. Photo below of the volunteer crew planting)