CLOVER , common in the United 
States and Canada, is widely distributed in fields, 
meadows and roadsides, flowering from April to 
November. Honey comes from clover. In June, the 
meadows reverberate with the hum of untiring, busy 
bumblebees as they buzz in ecstatic joy over stretches 
of bright tufted clover heads that peer above the 
grasses — for a sweet, brilliant field of red clover is 
a favorite haunt of bumblebees. Dora Reed Goodale, 
in her poem Red Clover , gives a beautiful picture of 
bees hovering around fragrant, crimson clover. . . . 
The common red clover is very useful and impor¬ 
tant to the farmer because it is one of the most 
nutritive forage plants. While the expression “in 
clover” is usually accepted as signifying abundance 
and good luck, it more truly expresses the satisfac¬ 
tion of animals set out' to graze in a clover field. 
There is real beauty in a field of red clover, on a 
summer day, as the cattle wade through its vast 
stretches of deep, crimson bloom. Francis Thompson, 
in The Seasons , makes one feel this beauty when he 
describes “thick flocks” of cattle nibbling through a 
vale of clover. ... To the insects, and especially 
the bumblebees, “living in clover” may rightly be 
interpreted as a life of abundance and luxury because, 
while buzzing over fields of clover blossoms, they are 
unmindful of the fact that they are the greatest 
benefactors of clover. They have no way of knowing 
their particular service to the clover as shown by 
the story of the Australian who imported clover as 
food for cattle, grew abundant fields of it the first 
season, but had no seed for the next year’s planting 
because he did not import the bumblebee. . . . The 
leaves of some clover are often oddly marked. Grow¬ 
ing in old Saint Roch Cemetery, in New Orleans, 
there is a clover bearing a leaf that has a red spot 
in the form of a heart. A very old tale handed 
down by the people of the French Quarter attributes 
this oddly marked leaf to the story of a lovely young 
girl who, on the night before her marriage, died and 
was interred in Saint Roch Cemetery. When her 
lover, greatly depressed, shot himself near her tomb, 
his blood spread over the ground and from that time 
all the leaves of the clover that ever grew there 
were marked with a red heart. . . . Among the 
peasants of Europe, there is a belief that dreaming 
of the clover is a sign of a happy marriage and a 
long prosperous life. For ages, the clover has been 
considered a mystic plant — all forms of good and 
bad luck were thought to accompany the finding of 
clover that had more than the regular three leaves. 
Even today, finding a four-leaf clover is considered 
good luck. . . . Red clover is the State Flower 
of Vermont. 
