PRAIRIE CLOVER 



Petalostemum purpureum (Vent.) Rydb. 



June - July Across the prairies long ago, the summer was a time 



Prairie roadsides of man}' flowers, a time of blossom-brilliance and 



color. Prairie soil supported a large population of 

 plants which were dependent for growth and life on its peculiar quality. 

 This was deep and black, densely matted with roots; somehow the seeds 

 of prairie plants penetrated this soil and gi'ew. Many of them vanished 

 when cultivation broke the sod and put com and soybeans in place of 

 gTasses and flowers. Some managed to linger only where that prairie sod 

 was unbroken. This gradually has naiTowed itself to stretches between 

 railroads and highways and in old cemeteries, and certain rolling land 

 too steep for fields or inadequate for pasture. 



It is in places such as these that the delicate wands of prairie clover 

 still are found here and there today. From June until August the rose- 

 purple fingers of prairie clover blossoms wave in the winds and attract 

 the bees. 



Prairie clover is in the Pea family with the other clovers, but is not 

 constnicted in the manner of the conmion red or white clovers. The 

 flower is only indistinctly like the butterfly-hooded flower of a clover. In 

 Petalostemum the petals are all on thread-shaped claws, four of them 

 nearly alike and spreading, borne on the top of the stamen filaments, 

 alternate Avith the five authors. The fifth petal is inserted in the boitom 

 of the calyx and is heart-shaped. The flowers are tiny and are massed in 

 long fingers of flower spikes at the tip and sides of a long, tougli, wiry, 

 grey-green stem with tiny, narrow, compound leaves. The entire plant 

 lacks any suggestion of weodiness. It is clean-limbed and fine, reminis- 

 cent of the beauty of the old prairie when flowers for miles covered the 

 ^assy sod. 



161 



