Trifolium longipes / long-stalked clover

Adjectives: fen, native, riparian, wet meadows

See also: Trifolium repens / white clover

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Long-stalked clover is a perennial herb that grows – usually – in a variety of moist habitats. It flowers all summer. The flowers look, essentially, like clover flowers. They are a little over an inch across and white or pink… or purple-ish, or bicolored. I hate using “not” as a descriptor, but long-stalked clover flowers are not surrounded by large, leaf-like bracts.

There are usually multiple flower heads per plant. They are rounded and the 5 to 16 individual flowers are dense (i.e. with short pedicels) and teeny. The flower heads are on long, short-hairy, stalks (peduncles), as the name suggests, “long” being up to 3 inches. These are often curved or bent over at the top, especially as the flowers age and turn brown.

The leaves of long-stalked clover have 2 to 5, but usually 3 leaflets. These are long, narrow, slightly serrated, and evenly colored along their length. The lower surface may be quite hairy. This is different from, say, white clover, which has rounded, oval leaves with the bases differently colored than the tips.

The stems can be upright, or decumbent, or flopped over but supported by other plants.

Another feature distinguishing long-stalked from white clover is the clonal habit. White clover can reproduce by stolons, like strawberry, and root at the stolon nodes. Long-stalked clover does neither.