Clover is one of the most common perennial herbaceous plants, which is very common, literally everywhere: in meadows, in forests, along field roads, in clearings, forest edges. In the field, the plant lives no more than 2-3 years, and only white clover - up to 10 years. Due to the triple shape of the leaves, it is also called a trefoil. This is a rooted plant, reaching 20 cm in height and characterized by a strong branching of the root system, which can penetrate the soil up to 1 meter deep. It has a shortened main stem and long creeping lateral shoots, because of which it is also called white creeping clover.
Clover belongs to the legume family, the subfamily - moths. The fruits of the plant are beans with 3-4 small, heart-shaped seeds. Inflorescences are spherical multi-flowered heads with 40-80 or more flowers. The color of the corollas is white, it can sometimes be cream or pinkish. White clover not as tall as red, and it has fewer heads than red. Accordingly, he has shorter flower tubes, which explains the presence of numerous bees over meadows with blooming white clover: their proboscis is enough to get to nectar. Fragrant honey collected from creeping clover is considered one of the best.
White clover is the most unpretentious of all types of clovers. It feels great on sandy and loamy soils, slightly acidic or neutral. It is water-hungry and can withstand flooding for up to 1 month, but at the same time it resists drought well. It has good winter hardiness and disease resistance. In years with fairly cool and cloudy weather, with rains during the flowering period, white clover gives more shoots than in dry and hot years. It grows best in places with a humid and cool climate. It blooms before other clovers - already in May, and blooms almost to the very frosts. Seeds of white clover ripen by the beginning or middle of August.
Clover has long been considered an excellent fodder plant. Clover grass contains a lot of protein, protein, starch, sugars, folic acid, vitamins, including carotene, vitamins C, P, E. On pastures and hayfields, it is grown as part of a grass mixture with timothy grass meadow or ryegrass, which increases the nutritional quality of green fodder. Moreover, such a neighborhood does not allow the plant to lie down (from the wind, if the crops are only from clover), it will be easier to mow, as well as collect seeds. The trampling of white clover by cattle on pastures does not inhibit the plant, as is the case with red clover, on the contrary, under favorable conditions, i.e. good moisture, they do not die, but continue to grow as separate plants, thanks to the roots in their stem nodes.
White clover It is known in folk medicine as a general strengthening, antitoxic, analgesic, tonic and wound healing agent. Inflorescences and its grass are used in the form of teas or infusions for bone pain, for coughing, as a diuretic, for gastrointestinal diseases, dropsy, mumps, as a diaphoretic for colds, as a sedative. Water infusion from flower heads, as well as tincture from a plant, is popularly used for poisoning, pulmonary tuberculosis, suffocation, female diseases, gout, hernias. In some areas of the Caucasus, an infusion of creeping clover is prescribed for the treatment and prevention of postpartum inflammatory processes in the uterus. Fresh, in the form of gruel, leaves are used to stop bleeding with bleeding wounds, applied to abscesses, hemorrhoids, various tumors and panaritium.
Dried and chopped clover flowers are used in cooking as a seasoning for soups, and the leaves (dry) are ground into flour and added to bread. Such bread becomes a dietary product. Salads are prepared from young leaves and clover shoots, and flowers can be soured like cabbage.
Recently, lawns made of white clover have become very popular. There are even special undersized varieties that form a dense mass of leaves, decorated with delicate white flowers and that look great on lawns. Such lawns are durable and, in addition, enrich the soil with nitrogen (clover roots are capable of retaining nitrogen contained in the air and contained in the soil and thereby accumulate it).