Sweet Yellow Clover, also known as Melilot and Hart’s Clover, is an herbaceous, non-native biennial in the Pea (legume) family. At this time of year, roadsides and meadows in rural Ontario are painted yellow with an extravagance of these pretty yellow blossoms.
It is listed on the Ontario Invasive Species register but, despite its status, this is one of the most useful wildflowers of Ontario:
- Sweet Yellow Clover is a major source of nectar for all bees, most especially the Western Honey Bee (Apis mellifera). Apiarists continue to cultivate this crop because, in a good year, healthy hives placed in close proximity to Yellow Clover yield as much as 100 kilos of honey per year. This compared to those healthy hives not close to Yellow Clover which, also under ideal conditions, can yield up to 100 pounds per year. An enormous difference to an apiarist trying to support his/her family on the proceeds of honey sales.
- Deer graze on Yellow Clover which is how the fanciful name — Hart’s Clover — came to be.
- Its seeds are the preferred diet of game birds.
The Golden Road
Along the dusty country lane,
Where wheels of wagons turn again,
A sea of yellow rises high,
To brush the quiet, cobalt sky.
They call her wild, they call her bold,
A wispy, waving drift of gold.
She spills across the stony ground,
Where little buzzing lives are found.
The honey-maker bobs and springs
On velvet legs and fine forewings,
To drink the sun inside its cup,
And raise her hive’s production up.
The deer step through the scented breeze,
Tasting clover on eating sprees
A roadside splash of sunlit grace,
That puts a smile on every face.
’Til next time, y’all…
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