Red Clover isn’t Red
Dear Red Clover,
Every morning, I call upon my plant allies, and you, Red Clover, for whatever reason I am not quite sure, are always at the top of the list. Is it the sweetness of your taste or your strange resinous scent when dried or the way you feel inside or maybe something in my history that makes you the herb for me? You and Nettle and Yarrow- you’re always there when I close my eyes and call upon my closest plant allies. Thank you for being such a dear, dear friend.
I am not able to collect enough of you for my annual use since you are included in all my herbal tea mixes. But purchasing you elsewhere is tricky because you need to be harvested before your red round head turns brown and people don’t seem to pay close enough attention to that. Or they may harvest your flowerhead above the stalk, causing you to lose blossoms because your pretty flower is actually hundreds of florets! I pluck you in your prime, right below your lovely three-leaved collar and dehydrate you whole like that.
Where did you come from? Sources say different things, and I can’t go back in time to find out. No matter. You are naturalized all over the world now, and like I said, I can’t get enough of your medicine! I love seeing you blooming in fields and meadows and those edgy places, from early spring until autumn. Covered in bees sipping your nectar, I want to dance in your patches, but I don’t want to scare off the bees nor get stung on my bare feet. Oh, the dilemmas of being in a field of clover! If we mow you though, I notice you will make more flowers instead of fading out.
Trifolium pratense, your botanical name, means a plant with three leaflets that lives in open land. All the Clovers, or Trifoliums, live in open land, so I don’t know why you got that species name. I would have named your species Trifolium medicina, but no one asked me. Which brings me to another bone I have to pick with your name and that is that you are not red! Who named you Red Clover, I want to know! Were they color blind? Pink or Purplish Clover makes more sense. Anyway, I like to call you Healing Clover.
