Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Fabales > Fabaceae > Melilotus > Melilotus officinalis

Melilotus officinalis (Medicinal Sweetclover; yellow sweet-clover; Common Yellow Melilot; Echter Honigklee; Gelber Steinklee; Ribbed Melilot; Yellow Sweet 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 officinalis

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-Low
Screening - Summer [3]  Porous
Screening - Winter [3]  Porous
Bee Flower Color [2]  UV-Green
Flower Color [3]  Yellow
Foliage Color [3]  Green
Fruit Color [3]  Yellow
Bloom Period [3]  Summer
Drought Tolerance [3]  High
Edible [4]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Fire Tolerance [3]  High
Flower Type [4]  Hermaphrodite
Frost Free Days [3]  3 months 20 days
Fruit/Seed Abundance [3]  High
Fruit/Seed Begin [3]  Summer
Fruit/Seed End [3]  Fall
Growth Form [3]  Single Crown
Growth Period [3]  Spring, Summer
Growth Rate [3]  Rapid
Hazards [4]  The dried leaves can be toxic. though the fresh leaves are quite safe to use. This is possibly due to the presence of coumarin, the substance that gives some dried plants the smell of new mown hay, if taken internally it can prevent the blood clotting.
Leaf Type [3]  Deciduous
Lifespan [4]  Annual/Biennial
Pollinators [4]  Bees
Propagation [3]  Seed
Regrowth Rate [3]  Slow
Root Depth [3]  16 inches (41 cm)
Scent [4]  The dried plant has a sweet aromatic fragrance like newly mown hay;
Seed Spread Rate [3]  Rapid
Seed Vigor [3]  High
Seeds Per [3]  258560 / lb (570027 / kg)
Shape/Orientation [3]  Erect
Structure [6]  Herb
Usage [4]  The leaves contain coumarin and they release the pleasant smell of newly mown hay when they are drying; The leaves are dried and used as an insect repellent; They can be put in pillows, mattresses etc; Poorly dried or fermented leaves produce a substance called dicoumarol. This is a potent anti-coagulant which is extremely poisonous in excess, it prevents the blood from coagulating and so it is possible to bleed to death from very small wounds. Dicoumarol is used in rat poisons; The plant can be used as a green manure, enriching the soil with nitrogen as well a providing organic matter;
Vegetative Spread Rate [3]  None
Flower Conspicuous [3]  Yes
Height [4]  3.936 feet (1.2 m)
Width [4]  28 inches (0.7 m)
Hardiness Zone Minimum [3]  USDA Zone: 3 Low Temperature: -40 F° (-40 C°) → -30 F° (-34.4 C°)
Light Preference [5]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [5]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [5]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [5]  Moist
Water Use [3]  Moderate
View Plants For A Future Record : Melilotus officinalis

Protected Areas

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Predators

Phenacoccus pumilus (dwarf mealybug)[7]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Erysiphe trifolii[8]
Peronospora meliloti[8]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

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.
♦ 3USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 4Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 5ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 6Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 7Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 8Jorrit 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.
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