Hi. You're right, it is confusing. Red Clover, T. pratense is the common perennial and Vt State Flower, believe it or not. It has typical clover leaves with each lobe about as big as your thumb. It mounds up into a big clump of a plant, sometimes holding the cherry red blooms up 12" or more. Looking at a field with it growing in early summer means mounds with the new leaves and pretty flowers. But...in a month or so, those same clumps are brown and ugly, and stay that way all summer. Most important, once you have this plant, it's there, and spreading, forever. It's a very tough perennial. The browning down is why red clover is never recommended for wildflower meadows.

Now, Crimson Clover, the annual, (T. incarnatum) is totally different. It is a quick-blooming bright red flower on smaller, thinner plants with smaller leaves. It's in bloom a couple of months after sprouting, and holds up sort of tapered flame-shaped flowers (while red clover's are very round) and is very lovely and benign. Since it's an annual, it makes its flush of bright light red bloom and is gone...forever. It may reseed a little, but is not invasive in a meadow.

You know white clover from lawn grass mixes, but the other one that is very common is Alsike clover, long used in agriculture. It looks very much like white clover except some of the "petals" in the white flower are magenta to red...giving it a sort of bi-colored flower. Both white and alsike are much smaller plants than red clover.

Then there are the tiny little hop clovers (only 4-5 inches high) and the towering yellow and white "sweet" clovers...tall billowy tree-like plants (up to 6 ft.) with flowers in slender clusters at the end of each stem.

Hope this helps.

Ok, great. So what's in the pasture mix is actually red clover, though it's not at all what I would call red.. it's not crimson either for that matter. Fuchsia colored but fuchsia clover would be a dumb name...

And what I want for the veggie garden is crimson clover. Wonder if it's actually crimson.

Now I've never been bothered by the red clover drying up in summer. I'm from CA where everything dries up in summer, it's not called the Golden State for nothing. The hills are all tawny brown all summer from the grass drying up. Here in WA the grasslands brown in summer too so our meadow, which is unirrigated, all dries up. Only stuff that survives summer drought makes it in our meadow, and that means mainly bentgrasses, oxeye daisy, vetches, clovers, CA poppies and lots of 'summer dandelions' of various species but mainly hairy cats ears. An invasive but so drought resistant there's no getting rid of it. Actually the red clover is springing back now with the fall drizzles. A second generation.

Don't know the hop clovers, but was introduced to the sweet clovers this summer. I believe they're considered noxious invasives here. I also get a lot of burr clover in the lawn so know that one all too well.

Thanks for straightening things out!

Don't forget the prairie clovers (Petalostemum, formerly Dalea). Not sure how well they would do in California, but they are great additions to prairie/meadow plantings in the midwest.

Here is a link that might be useful: purple prairie clover

Most of the red clovers have a pale pink flower but the color range is from a redish pink to white. The crimson clover is usually scarlet and can be seen at site www.weedalert.com/weed_pages/wa_crimson_clover.htm
It can range in color from scarlet to pink to white and even variegated. The crimson clover reseeds itself, if you let it go to seed, very well in environments which do not have summer rains. It sets a lot of seed which will start to germinate in the summer rains and then it dies when everything dries again. So your climate sounds very good for the crimson. If you want to get rid of the clover, just mow it so it doesn't go to flower and it will be gone.

In SC, crimson clover is planted in the fall and is dead by June 1 of the next year. It can reseed itself, but if the summer is wet the seed will germinate and die with the drought. If the summer is very dry, the seed survives and doesn't germinate until the fall and you could have a very good winter stand. It is not a perennial plant.

"And this should be a consideration to anyone seeking maximum efficiency from their cover-crop planting. "

what is ur meaning of 'covercrop"?

u are not including this as a native prairie meadow nurse covercrop? and the intention of this 'covercrop' is for future farm land use?

froggy

Does anybody know what a lemon clover is?