230 



LEGUMINOSAE (PULSE FAMILY) 



Range: Throughout eastern North America. 



Habitat: Meadows, pastures, grain fields, roadsides, and waste 

 places. 



Stone Clover usually grows and is able to thrive on very dry, 

 sandy, and gravelly soils, and it is a pity that it is not a better 

 fodder plant. But its excessive hairiness 

 causes cattle to dislike it and even makes 

 it dangerous, particularly when eaten by 

 horses, as the fuzzy flower-heads some- 

 times collect into felt-like, compact masses 

 called phytobezoars, or hair-balls, closing 

 the intestines and occasionally causing a 

 very distressful form of death. 



Stem six inches to a foot high, erect, 

 slender, much branched, covered with 

 fine, silky, gray hair. Leaves alternate 

 palmately three-foliolate, with short peti- 

 oles and narrow, awl-shaped stipules ; 

 leaflets narrowly oblong or wedge-shaped, 

 about an inch in length, obtuse or often 

 notched at the tips. Flowers in dense, 

 nearly cylindrical heads, a half-inch to an 

 inch long, on slender, terminal peduncles ; 

 corolla white or pinkish but hidden by 

 ^ ca , yx . lobes> which extend far beyo nd 



it in five slender, awl-like points, thickly 

 fringed with silky gray or pale reddish hairs. Pods very tiny, con- 

 taining one or two seeds which are a frequent impurity of other 

 clover seeds and of grasses and grain. (Fig. 163.) 



Means of control 



Enrich and cultivate the ground, seeding heavily to other and 

 better members of the Clover Family. When Stone Clover is 

 cured with hay, the danger from hair-balls is averted by cutting 

 before the heads are matured. Also such prevention of seed- 

 ing will cleanse the ground of the weed, if persistently re- 

 peated until all dormant seeds have germinated and been thus 

 destroyed. 



FIG. 163. Rabbit-foot 

 Clover (Trifolium arvense). 



