CXL.— THE WHITE CLOVER. 
Trifolium repens Linne. 
W HEN we rejoice in the delicious smell of a field of Clover we do not often 
think of cards ; and, perhaps, Clover is equally distant from our thoughts 
when we look at the suit known as “Clubs.” The two things are, however, closely 
connected. The name Clover is commonly Claver in old writers, and the latter form 
is still in use in the North. This is identical with the Flemish klaver and so close to 
the Old English claefer that it is hardly necessary to speculate, as Dr. Prior does in 
his invaluable “ Popular Names of British Plants,” on some possible Frisian word as 
its source. It is, as he says, evidently a noun in the plural number, so that we may, 
perhaps, connect it etymologically rather with the Latin plural clavce than with the 
singular clava. Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary, it is true, connects it with the Old 
English verb cleafan, to cleave, “ because of the remarkable division of the leaves ” ; 
but Dr. Prior reminds us that the suit of cards that we call “ Clubs ” is known in 
French as Trefle, i.e. trefoil, and that Hercules is described as carrying a clava trinodis 
or club with three knots. It is, however, possible that the name of the plants 
known as Clover may have had reference originally to the round, club-like head of 
flowers rather than to the trefoil leaf. 
Although undoubtedly a most natural genus, Linn6 found Trifolium difficult to 
define according to his own arbitrary principles, and accordingly made use of the 
capitate character of the inflorescence as part of its definition, to the horror of Sir 
James Edward Smith, who is always more Linnaean than Linne himself. These 
flower-heads prove on examination to be in fact merely close, short racemes ; while 
the most distinctive other characters of the genus are the generally palmately trefoil 
leaves ; the five unequal teeth of the calyx ; the slight adhesion of the wing and 
keel petals to one another and to the filaments of the diadelphous stamens ; the 
persistence of the withered corolla ; and the deciduous one- or few-seeded pod. 
The genus comprises some two hundred and fifty species, mostly low-growing 
herbs, which are natives mainly of the North Temperate regions, though also 
represented in the South. They are either annual or perennial, the twenty British 
species including fifteen annual and five perennial. The latter, such as the White 
Clover {Trifolium repens Linn6), have frequently a creeping, wiry rhizome which 
branches freely on or below the surface of the ground, rooting at intervals. In 
T. refens this stem is solid. 
The leaves of the White Clover rise on long petioles with a pair of narrow, 
lanceolate-acuminate stipules adnate to the base of each. Lord Avebury ingeniously 
contrasted these with the broader ones in the Red Clover (T. pratense Linn6), pointing 
out that, whereas these last serve to protect the young head of flowers, in the White 
Clover the peduncle so elongates as to bear the flower-head while still very young 
far away from the covering of stipules. The leaflets are on short, equal stalks, are 
