Trifolium arvense L.

Rabbit Foot Clover

Herb

Annual

Vascular

Rabbit Foot Clover is an introduced annual herbaceous plant in the Bean family (Fabaceae). It is native to Europe and western Asia. In Alabama, it can be found state wide. Rabbit Foot Clover grows in lawns, on roadsides, and in fields and pastures. It is an annual with a tap root. Stems are erect, branched or unbranched, 2-14 inches in height, and softly pubescent. Leaves are alternate, petiolate, and palmately 3-foliate. The leaflets are linear to oblanceolate in outline, ciliate along the margins or with tiny teeth, and pubescent. Flowers are produced in a dense gray terminal head. Individual flowers are sessile with a densely pubescent calyx. The calyx has 5 wide spreading narrow lobes that are plumose pubescent. Flowers are white or pink in color and exceeded by the calyx lobes. The fruit is a 1-2 seeded legume that is enclosed in the calyx. Rabbit Foot Clover is a larval food plant for Orange Sulfur (Colias eurytheme), Clouded Sulfur (Colias philodice), Eastern Tailed Blue (Everes comyntas), and Northern Cloudywing (Thorybes pylades) Butterflies. Rabbit Foot Clover is sometimes planted as a cover crop to improve soil fertility.--A. Diamond

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Not Native

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