Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Fabales > Fabaceae > Melilotus > Melilotus albus

Melilotus albus (Sweet Clover; White Sweet Clover; White Melilot; Weisser Steinklee; Weisser Honigklee; Trebol Hubam; Melilot Blanc; Melilot; Hubam Clover; Hubam; Bokhara Clover)

Synonyms:
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Wikipedia Abstract

Melilotus albus (Bokhara clover, honey clover, tree clover, sweet clover, white-flowered sweet clover, white sweet clover, white melilot), is a legume sometimes grown for forage. White sweet clover is a major source of nectar for an apiary. Its characteristic sweet odour, intensified by drying, is derived from coumarin.
View Wikipedia Record: Melilotus albus

Infraspecies

Melilotus albus f. proliferus

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-Low
Bee Flower Color [2]  Blue-Green
Flower Color [2]  White
Edible [3]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [3]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [3]  Dried leaves can be toxic though the fresh leaves are quite safe; This is due to the presence of coumarin, the substance that gives some dried plants the smell of new mown hay. Taken internally it can prevent the blood from clotting;
Lifespan [3]  Annual/Biennial
Pollinators [3]  Bees
Scent [3]  The dried plant has a sweet smell of newly mown hay;
Structure [5]  Herb
Usage [3]  An oil obtained from the seed is used in paints, varnishes etc; The dried leaves smell of new-mown hay and are used as an insect repellent; The dried leaves contain a substance called coumarin, this is an anti-clotting agent and has been used as a basis of the rat killer 'warfarin'; The plant is a good green manure crop; It can be sown in the autumn and overwintered or sown from spring to mid summer. It can be cut several times for compost material before being finally incorporated into the soil; Fast growing, it produces a high bulk of organic material and also fixes a large quantity of atmospheric nitrogen; It can also be grown under soft and top fruit, when it will expel mice;
Height [3]  3.936 feet (1.2 m)
Light Preference [4]  Full Sun
Soil Acidity [4]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [4]  Mostly Infertile
Soil Moisture [4]  Mostly Dry
View Plants For A Future Record : Melilotus albus

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Predators

Callipepla californica (Californian Quail)[6]
Glaucopsyche lygdamus (palos verdes blue butterfly)[7]
Lycaeides idas (Northern Blue)[6]
Rhipidomys venustus (charming climbing mouse)[8]
Sidnia kinbergi[9]

Providers

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Erysiphe trifolii[6]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Arnold SEJ, Faruq S, Savolainen V, McOwan PW, Chittka L, 2010 FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14287.
♦ 3Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 4ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 5Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 7Butterflies of Canada, Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility
♦ 8STUDY ON THE DIET AND FEEDING PREFERENCES OF Calomys venustus (RODENTIA, MURIDAE), Fabiana Castellarini, Héctor L. Agnelli, and Jaime J. Polop, Mastozoología Neotropical; 5(1):5-11 (1998)
♦ 9New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
♦ 10Robertson, C. Flowers and insects lists of visitors of four hundred and fifty three flowers. 1929. The Science Press Printing Company Lancaster, PA.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0