WHITE AND AL8IKE CLOVER. 



CHAPTER V. 



White clover sustains the same relation to permanent 

 pastures on dry calcareous or carboniferous soils, and alsike on 

 pastures of slough, marsh or other wet lands, that the red 

 and the mammoth sustain to the meadows in the carbonifer- 

 ous soils in the northern arid western states that have rain- 

 fall of twenty inches and over, and that alfalfa sustains to 

 the deep, sandy or other light soils in the Pacific states and 

 territories and other arid or semi-arid regions where irriga- 

 tion is possible. The relation is not merely that of a source 

 of an abundant supply of pasture and forage on the one hand 

 or of hay and forage on the other, but each is a hand-maid, a 

 help-meet, as a source of nitrogen to whatever other grasses, 

 non-leguminous, may be associated with them. There is no 

 true grass that we know of that will not flourish better and 

 produce more abundantly when associated with the clovers, 

 whether in the pasture or in the meadows. 



It is unnecessary for us to enter into any detailed descrip- 

 tion of the white clover nor is any illustration needed to 

 identify a plant so widely spread and generally known. It 

 is called trijolium repens, or the creeping three-leaf plant, 

 because of its creeping habit of growth. Its deficiency in 

 length prevents it from being of much value as a meadow 

 grass, although the analysis of its hay shows it to be equal, if 

 not, indeed, superior, to either the red or the mammoth clover. 

 It differs from the red and mammoth in many particulars. 



FIRST. It is perennial ; that is, it grows from the same root 

 year after year, while the others are for the most part, biennial 



