Clover Plants in a Rain Forest

Red Clover

• Red clover, or Trifolium pratense as it's botanically known, is a wild rain forest plant that grows in the woods of the Pacific Northwest and Cascade Mountains. Like many rain forest plants, it's used as a herbal medicine to treat coughs, skin diseases and menopausal problems such as hot flashes and sleep disorders. Red clover is planted commercially for livestock forage mixes, but spreads readily to invade lawns and orchards. It's listed as a weed by the Virginia Tech website. Perennial plants posses the characteristic trifoliate, or three-lobed leaf shape and red to pink rounded flowers. A close relative, white clover grows is shorter and flatter than red clover and has smaller leaves and white flowers.

White Clover

• White clover, known properly as Trifolium repens, is a perennial rain forest plant with trifoliate leaves and small white flowers. Each of the three leaf lobes bears a small light green or white V-shaped marking at the base, close to where it joins the stem. Leaf margins are slightly notched. Plants are listed as weeds, because they escape the pastures where they're planted to reproduce rapidly and aggressively in lawns and commercial turfgrass landscaping projects. The hybrid, Alsike clover, is mistaken for white clover, but Alsike is a more clumped, upright plant with longer leaf lobes. White clover's a European native, now naturalized in the U.S., and grows in the mountains and Northern areas of California.

Running Buffalo Clover

• Running buffalo clover, or Trifolium stoloniferum, is a rain forest plant once thought to be extinct. This clover was rediscovered growing in West Virginia in the year 1985 and now grows in most U.S. states, although still threatened by factors like habitat loss, competition from non-native plants and excessive grazing. Plants do not take their name from the bison who contributed the required ground disturbance these clovers need to thrive. Multiple runners, or roots, shoot out to form new plants in an invasive spreading habit. Running buffalo clover does not posses the arrow-shaped leaf markings of other clover varieties. To identify this type, look for a small platform of leaves seated right under the purple-tinged white flowers.

Buffalo Clover

• Buffalo clover, or Trifolium reflexum, is a rain forest plant listed as an endangered species in Ohio, but not included on the federal list of endangered plants, like its close relative, the running buffalo clover. Plants posses large greenish-white flowers and leaves that take on a purple hue in strong sunlight. Their preferred habitat gives plants some sunlight, which is filtered by the rain forest canopy. Buffalo clover is not found in more densely forested locations. This clover is a native American plant found U.S. locations, including in Missouri and Ohio.