Sunday, July 03, 2011

red clover

Here is Trifolium pratense in the family of fabaceae:



This example of red clover was captured in Illinois, along side an on ramp to I-57 on June 13, 2009.  It was a rather large patch of all sorts of flowers and I first took this to be Persian clover, which I have already posted, but the size of the plant wasn't quite the same.  I took a few pictures, as an afterthought, to look more closely later and too my surprise, it was a different species. 

This plant was introduced to the North American continent from Europe and has been exceedingly successful.  It can be found throughout the Lower 48, Alaska, Greenland and above the Arctic circle in Canada.  It has been proclaimed the State Flower of Vermont.  It has avoided designation as a noxious plant, but more than that, attained to the status of Wetland Indicator

I suppose T. pratense is a story of an immigrant plant that we can all admire and hold up to our friends in the Plant Kingdom as an example of how an invasive species should behave.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is an interesting looking clover and it was found in some part of Greenland