Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CLXVII · Topic 25: Farm and garden crops
167. Sweet clover
Goal: Your child finds sweet clover by its smell, compares it with red clover and the sweet pea, and explains how it improves poor soil.
You'll need
- Nature notebook, pencil and colored pencils
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- A trowel
What's in the book
A Teacher's Story about sweet clover, found by its perfume along country roads, and the lesson: Leading thought, Method and nine questions.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
Sweet clover blooms in summer along roadsides, railroad banks and waste places, tall plants with slender spikes of tiny white or yellow flowers. Comstock says the story often starts with the smell.
The leading thought
This beneficent plant grows in soil too poor for other plants to thrive in. It brings nitrogen and air into the soil, and thus makes it fertile so that other plants soon find in its vicinity nourishment for growth.
Find it by smell
What first makes you aware that you are near sweet clover? On what kinds of soil, and in what localities, does sweet clover abound?
Leaves and height
How high does the plant grow? What is the color of its foliage?
Compare one of the leaves with the leaf of a red clover, and describe the likeness and the difference.
The flowers
Describe the way the sweet clover blossoms. Do the lower or upper flowers open first?
Take a blossom and compare it with that of a sweet pea. Can you see the banner? The wings? The keel?
Use the lens: each tiny flower is shaped like a sweet pea (Lesson CLXV).
Visitors
What insects do you find visiting it?
Beekeepers like sweet clover for honey. Watch the bees from a little distance.
Nature notebook
Draw a flower spike and one tiny flower enlarged, labeled banner, wings and keel. Dry a sprig in your notebook and smell it next week: the sweet hay smell gets stronger as it dries.