White Clover

Description:

It is a herbaceous, perennial plant. It is low growing, with heads of whitish flowers, often with a tinge of pink or cream that may come on with the aging of the plant. The heads are generally 1.5–2 centimetres (0.6–0.8 in) wide, and are at the end of 7-cm (2.8-in) peduncles or flower stalks.[9] The leaves, are trifoliolate, smooth, elliptic to egg-shaped and long-petioled and usually with light or dark markings. The stems function as stolons, so white clover often forms mats, with the stems creeping as much as 18 cm (7.1 in) a year, and rooting at the nodes.[9] The leaves form the symbol known as shamrock. (Wikipedia, 2015)

Habitat:

White clover grows among turfgrass, crops, and in a large number of other landscapes.[9] It is also found in a limited range of different field type environments. White clover can tolerate close mowing, and can grow on many different types and pHs of soil, but prefers clay.[9] It is considered to be a beneficial component of natural or organic lawn care due to its ability to fix nitrogen and out-compete lawn weeds. Natural nitrogen fixing reduces leaching from the soil and can reduce the incidence of some lawn diseases that are enhanced by the availability of synthetic fertilizer.[10] (Wikipedia, 2015)

Notes:

Besides making an excellent forage crop for livestock, clovers are a valuable survival food: they are high in proteins, widespread, and abundant. The fresh plants have been used for centuries as additives to salads and other meals consisting of leafy vegetables. They are not easy for humans to digest raw, however, but this is easily fixed by boiling the harvested plants for 5–10 minutes.[citation needed][11] Dried flowerheads and seedpods can also be ground up into a nutritious flour and mixed with other foods, or can be steeped into an herbal tea. White clover flour is sometimes sprinkled onto cooked foods such as boiled rice.[citation needed] Four leaf Trifolium repens, in its natural setting. Three-leaf shamrocks can be seen When used in soups, the leaves are often harvested before the plant produces flowers. The roots are also edible, although they are most often cooked firsthand.[citation needed] Before the introduction of broad-leaf herbicides, white clover was more often added to lawn seed mixes than it is today, as it is able to grow and provide green cover in poorer soils where turfgrasses do not perform well. Many people consider clover a weed when growing in lawns, in part because the flowers are attractive to bees and thus could create a danger for people with bare feet. White clover is the only known plant on which the caterpillars of the Coleophoridae case-bearer moth Coleophora mayrella feed.[citation needed] In Britain, a high abundance of white clover is generally associated with species-poor, agriculturally improved grassland habitats, as it out-competes the more rare plants and grasses especially in fertile soils, and has often been added as part of reseeding. Agri-environment schemes, such as the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, Environmentally Sensitive Areas Scheme, and Environmental Stewardship, give funding to species-rich grasslands that are relatively infertile and do not generally have an abundance of white clover. However, white clover does have value as a pollen and nectar source particularly in intensively farmed areas or amenity grasslands where there are few other flowers, and it can be found naturally at low levels in species-rich grasslands.[citation needed] (Wikipedia, 2015)