Blooming Clovers

     Clovers are currently blooming in the Middle Atlantic States, as elsewhere in North America.  Seven common species in the Mid-Atlantic States include white clovers, red clovers, white sweet clovers, yellow sweet clovers, hop clovers, smaller hop clovers and least hop clovers, all of which are alien plants from Eurasia.
     All these clover species begin to blossom toward the end of May and continue to flower through much of the summer.  They are all legumes in the pea family.  Leguminous plants take nitrogen from the air and fix it in the soil, enriching it.  And clovers provide food for a variety of animals, both wild and domestic.
     White clover, with its white flowers, is the most familiar species of its family in North America.  It is abundant on many mowed lawns and roadsides, making some lawns appear white in summer, and more interesting.  This type of clover is commonly visited by honey bees, bumble bees, small butterflies and other kinds of insects that sip nectar from its sweet-smelling flowers.  Chemicals in the stomachs of the bees turn that sugary nectar to honey that the bees use to feed their larvae.  Also, adult worker honey bees sustain themselves through winter by eating honey they made the summer before.     
     White clover is well adapted to regularly-mowed, short-grass lawns.  It produces flowers on stems short enough that they don't get cut off by lawn mowers.  But if blossoms are mowed off, the plants grow new blooms.  In this way, white clover can't be beat.  There are blooms almost no matter what happens to the plants.  And the flowers provide nectar for insects through summer, making lawns and roadsides more interesting. 
     Red clover is food for many kinds of animals.  It is a kind of hay that is periodically cut and baled for cows and horses when they are confined to barns in winter.  White-tailed deer, wood chucks and cottontail rabbits also munch the foliage and blossoms of this clover in the fields.  And red clover has hot-pink blossoms that are attractive to many kinds of butterflies, bees and other types of insects that sip nectar from those blooms. 
     Red clover is also common and decorative along roadsides.  There it might get cut occasionally, but not as often as in hay fields.  And there, too, the above-mentioned wild animals ingest its leaves and nectar.
     White sweet clover and yellow sweet clover plants are indistinguishable from each other, except for the color of their flowers.  These clovers grow along roadsides and in abandoned fields and can stand up to five feet tall.  Both species have many attractive, white or yellow, depending upon the kind, small blooms along the upper parts of their stems, which also attract bees and other kinds of insects.
     The three types of hop clovers are small and flat to the ground.  Nestled among other kinds of prostate plants hugging the soil, each species has a few clusters of tiny, yellow blooms on each plant.  The least hops have the smallest flowers, smaller hops have slightly bigger ones and hop clovers have the largest blossoms of this grouping.    
     Enjoy the beauties of clovers this summer.  They are everywhere, except in deep forests.  And they provide food for a variety of animals, both wild and domestic.