CLOVER ( Trifolium pratense.) 



This valuable forage plant was 

 first introduced into England in 

 1645, during the stormy times of 

 Charles I., and rapidly met with 

 favor throughout the kingdom. It 

 properly belongs to the leguminous 

 family, which includes a considera- 

 ble number of other forage plants 

 that are called artificial grasses, to 

 distinguish them from the true or 

 natural grasses called gramineoe. 

 The botanic name trifolium comes 

 from two latin words, ires, three, 

 and folium, a leaf, and in England 

 it is often called trefoil. It may 

 always be known by having three leaves in a bunch, and the flowers 

 in dense, oblong, globular heads. 



There is no grass, natural or artificial, that is more useful to the 

 farmeV or stock-grower than red clover. It has been styled, with 

 some show of reason, the corner stone of agriculture, and this not 

 only on account of its vigorous vitality, but because it adapts itself 

 to a great variety of soils. It is widely diffused, and abounds in 

 every part of Europe, in North America, and even in Siberia. It 

 furnishes an immense amount of grazing, yields an abundance of 

 nutritious hay, and is a profitable crop, considered with reference 

 to the seed alone. But beyond all these, it acts as a vigorous 

 ameliorator of the soil, increasing more than any other forage plant 

 the amount of available nitrogen, and so becomes an important 

 agent in keeping up the productive capacity of the soil, and in- 

 creasing the yield of other crops. 



SOILS ADAPTED TO ITS GROWTH. 



Red clover is a biennial plant, and under judicious tillage may 

 be made a perennial, and is specially adapted to argillaceous soils, 

 but it will grow well upon sandy soils, when a " catch " is secured, 

 by the application of a top-dressing of gypsum or barn- yard ma- 

 nure. I have seen it growing with vigor upon the feldspathic soils 

 of Johnson county, upon the sandstone soils of the Cumberland 



