WHITE SWEET CLOVER (^Melilot) 



Melilotus alba Desr. 



June - July June is the froth of white and yellow sweet clover, 



Fields, roadsides the tall and bushy melilot along the country roadsides 



and in the broad and sunny fields. Melilot is fra- 

 grant from the moment the leaves grow in spring to the time, well past 

 its bloom, when the old stalks stand drying in the sun. And the clover 

 hay in the barn is sweet with the memories of June. 



June is a clover field — June is all the creatures which live or find 

 their living in and under and over a clover field. It is the dickcissel clack- 

 ing all day from a melilot head, and swooping to the nest of pale blue eggs 

 hidden on the gTound among clover plants. It is the meadowlark nesting 

 at the edge of the field ; it is bol)-whites finding insects there, and the gTey 

 spermophile which comes streaking in a streamlined journey between cars, 

 across the highway nnd into the shelter and anonymity of the clover. 



June is a clover field, and it is the perfume and character of clover, 

 and the long roots which the ])lants send into the soil. It is the silent, 

 unseen activity of the microscopic bacteria on clover roots, at work in the 

 soil to make nitrogen to enrich the land. 



For the June clovci- field is not all beauty. It is a vast chemical 

 laboratory. It is a cr()[) wliich does not tear down the soil nor deplete it 

 of its nutrients. Instead, the clover continually adds the beneficial nitro- 

 gen which will feed the crops that follow clover in a wisely rotated pro- 

 gram. Nitrogen is |)art of all living tissue, and i1 is the le<:innes which, 

 of all known plants or animals, are able to produce it hy means of the 

 partnership of nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the I'oots. 



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