RED CLOVER, WHITE CLOVER

Red clover in flower:



White clover, in flower:



I'd imagine everyone is familiar with with these three-leaved (sometimes four, for good luck) plants. You can find them in lawns, vacant lots, roadsides, old fields, and pastures. (If you find an entire field of them, use caution. There's a good chance a beekeeper has a few of his hives scattered about.)

Both flowers will bloom from spring to fall, but the best time to collect them is in late spring, when the most flowers bloom. Look closely,and discard any flowers that have brown on them, they taste terrible. Clover flowers, fresh or dried, make one of the best teas around. You can buy clover tea in the store, but they cost anywhere from 20 cents to a dollar per teabag. Save some money, and make the tea yourself .

The flowers can also be chopped up and eaten raw in salads, or even dried, ground, and added to flour for breads, biscuits, and pancakes. Either way, they're rich in vitamin C, B-complex vitamins, beta carotene, and other nutrients. Medicinally, a strong infusion of red clover was used as an expectorant and antispasmodic for bronchitis, whooping cough, and even tuberculosis.

There are varying opinions as to the edibility of young clover leaves. Some people eat them raw in salads, while others say they are indigestible. Some Native Americans made a sort of mush from the leaves, after soaking them for hours in salt water. And some sources say to boil the leaves for twenty minutes before eating. I've tried them raw and cooked, and I don't much care for them. The young leaves do make a decent tea, though not as good as the flowers.

WARNING: As was stated above, you can make a wine out of anything, but do not attempt to make clover wine. Warfarin - the rat poison - was derived from fermented clover. I don't know how many glasses of clover wine I would have to drink before I died of internal hemorrhaging, nor am I willing to find out.

Onward and upward,
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