It is perennial, and is often found wild, but has not yet been
cultivated.
53. TRIFOLIUM pratense. RED CLOVER.--This is a very old plant in
cultivation, and perhaps, with little exception, one of the most useful.
It is very productive and nutritive, but soon exhausts the soil; and
unless it is in particular places it presently is found to go off, which
with the grazier is become a general complaint of all our cultivated
Clovers. It is also well known, that if the crop is mown the plant is
the sooner exhausted.
Seeds of Clover have the property of remaining long in the ground after
it has become thus in a manner exhausted; and it frequently occurs that
ashes being laid on will stimulate the land afresh, and cause the seeds
to vegetate; which has given rise to the erroneous opinion with many
persons, that ashes, and particularly soap ashes, will, when sown on
land, produce Clover.
Red Clover is usually cultivated in stiff clays or loamy soils; and when
sown alone, about sixteen or eighteen pounds of seed are used for the
acre.
54. TRIFOLIUM medium. ZIGZAG, or MOUNTAIN-CLOVER.--Is in some degree
like the preceeding; it produces a purple flower, and the foliage is
much the same in appearance: but this is a much stronger perennial, and
calculated from its creeping roots to last much longer in the land. It
is equally useful as a food for cattle, and does not possess that
dangerous quality of causing cattle to be hove, or blown, by eating it
when fresh and green.
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