I love to bike to work. I get to see all kinds of interesting things, like an enormous hawk sitting on top of a parked pickup truck, and three little kids waving at me through the moonroof of a car, and mock orange bushes in bloom, that I would miss from the bus. One thing I noticed yesterday as I was biking along is how much clover there is. Everywhere I looked, I could see the sweet-smelling white clover, trifolium repens, and the tiny yellow clover, trifolium dubium. (I did not see any of the big red clover, trifolium pratense.)
The white clover smells good and the red clover is full of nectar that you can actually suck out of the individual florets, much like a columbine, but the poor little yellow clover is pretty much overlooked. Apparently it is an invasive species from Europe, and in Seattle they hate it:
http://www.arthurleej.com/a-hopclover.html
That's OK, I don't much care for Seattle. I don't know why people would dislike little hopclover so much; it's a perfectly good groundcover that requires less maintenance than a grass lawn, and it puts nitrogen back into the soil. Then again, maybe I have to defend little clover because of my heritage. The word for clover in Gaelic is seamair, which I think is pronounced something like "sha-mere," and the diminutive is seamrog, which is of course pronounced "shamrock." Or maybe I just like it because it is small, and small is cute. Maybe I like it because it is the underdog - I mean, what's up with that scientific name? The doubtful clover? What's doubtful about it? It is just a humble little plant that provides food for bees and butterflies and puts nitrogen back into the soil for the other, more glamorous plants. You could say it is the Samwise Gamgee of the plant world, and while other people may say Aragorn or Galadriel were their favorite characters from The Lord of the Rings, I loved Sam. And in the same way I think the little clover is delightful, just going around quietly helping the other plants and animals without asking for any renown.
Famous Hat
The white clover smells good and the red clover is full of nectar that you can actually suck out of the individual florets, much like a columbine, but the poor little yellow clover is pretty much overlooked. Apparently it is an invasive species from Europe, and in Seattle they hate it:
http://www.arthurleej.com/a-hopclover.html
That's OK, I don't much care for Seattle. I don't know why people would dislike little hopclover so much; it's a perfectly good groundcover that requires less maintenance than a grass lawn, and it puts nitrogen back into the soil. Then again, maybe I have to defend little clover because of my heritage. The word for clover in Gaelic is seamair, which I think is pronounced something like "sha-mere," and the diminutive is seamrog, which is of course pronounced "shamrock." Or maybe I just like it because it is small, and small is cute. Maybe I like it because it is the underdog - I mean, what's up with that scientific name? The doubtful clover? What's doubtful about it? It is just a humble little plant that provides food for bees and butterflies and puts nitrogen back into the soil for the other, more glamorous plants. You could say it is the Samwise Gamgee of the plant world, and while other people may say Aragorn or Galadriel were their favorite characters from The Lord of the Rings, I loved Sam. And in the same way I think the little clover is delightful, just going around quietly helping the other plants and animals without asking for any renown.
Famous Hat
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