PEA FAMILY 



"Comrade of winds, beloved of sun, 

 Kissed by the dewdrops one by one; 

 Prophet of Good-luck mystery 

 By sign of four which few may see; 

 Symbol of nature's magic zone, 

 One out of three and three in one. 



"Sweet by the roadsides, sweet by rills, 

 Sweet in the meadows, sweet on hills, 

 Sweet in its white, sweet in its red — 

 Oh, half its sweet cannot be said; 

 Sweet in its every living breath, 

 Sweetest, perhaps, at last in death. 



"Oh, who knows what the Clover thinks? 

 No one ! Unless the BoboUnks !" 



— Helen Hunt. 



The Red Clover is the common Clover that every 

 one knows, grown everywhere throughout the north 

 for hay and pasturage. It is so common that we 

 are hkely to disregard its beauty, but a bouquet of 

 Clover blossoms is one of the most beautiful of the 

 wild. 



The plant was long believed to be a biennial, but is 

 now known to be a short-lived perennial. At what 

 time it came into general cultivation in this country 

 is not definitely known, but records show that there 

 were fields of it prior to the American Revolution. 

 The blossom is fragrant and the corolla tubes full of 

 nectar, but only the bumblebee has a proboscis long 

 enough to reach this. The honey-bees have grown 

 wise enough to bite through the corolla to reach the 

 nectar, but they do not in this way pollinate the 

 flower. The bumblebee, going from Clover head to 

 Clover head, gets her velvety body sprinkled thickly 



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