656 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



While sweet clover. 



blue-green foliage and its spikes of flowers for 

 the enjoyment of the passer-by, while its roots 

 are feeling their way down deep in the poor, 

 hard soil, taking air and drainage with them 

 and building, with the aid of their underground 

 partners, nitrogen factories which will enrich 

 the poverty-stricken earth, so that other 

 plants may find nourishment in it. 



Never was there such another beneficent 

 weed as the sweet clover — beneficent alike to 

 man, bee and soil. Usually we see it growing 

 on soil so poor that it can only attain a height 

 of from two to four feet; but if it once gets 

 foothold on a generous soil, it rises majestically 

 ten feet tall. 



Like the true clover, its leaf has three 

 leaflets, the middle one being longer and 

 larger than the other two and separated from 

 them by a naked midrib; the leaflets are long, 

 oval in shape, with narrow, toothed edges, 

 and they are dull, velvety green; the two 

 stipules at the base of the leaf are little and 

 pointed. 



The blossoming of the sweet clover is a 

 pretty story. The blossom stem, which 

 conies from the axil 



of the leaf, is at first an inch or so long, 

 packed closely with little, green buds hav- 

 ing pointed tips. But as soon as the blos- 

 soming begins, the stem elongates, bring- 

 ing the flowers farther apart — just as if 

 the buds had been fastened to a rubber cord 

 which had been stretched. The buds lower 

 down open first ; each day some of the flowers 

 bloom, while those of the day before linger, 

 and thus the blossom tide rises, little by little 

 up the stalk. But the growing tip develops 

 more and more buds, and thus the blossom 

 story continues until long after the frosts have 

 killed most other plants; finally the tip is 

 white with blossoms, while the seeds developed 

 from the first flowers on the plant have been 

 perfected and scattered. 



The blossom is very much like a diminutive 

 sweet pea; the calyx is like a cup with five 

 points to its rim, and is attached to the stalk 

 by a short stem. The banner petal is larger 

 than the wings and the keel. A lens shovfs the 

 stamens united into two groups, with a thread- 

 like pistil pushing out between; both stamens 

 and pistil are covered by the keel, as in the pea 

 blossom. 



Yellow sweet clover. 



