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Melilotus indicus
Also called Sweet clover, Snall melilot, Small Melilot, Annual Yellow Sweet Clover, Hexham Scent, Sour Clover, California Lucerne
Annual yellow sweetclover is a fast-growing yellow-flowered annual legume, usually a weed of disturbed ground, roadsides and fields. It is grown mainly as forage, bee forage or soil-building cover, and is tolerant of salty soils.
Melilotus indicus, sometimes incorrectly written Melilotus indica, is a yellow-flowered herb in the Fabaceae family. It is native to northern Africa, Europe and Asia, but naturalized throughout much of the rest of the world's temperate climate zones. It is a commonly occurring weed in disturbed habitats, with historical uses for forage and medicine.
Common names in English include sweet clover (or sweet-clover), sour clover (sour-clover, sourclover), Indian sweet-clover, annual yellow sweetclover, Bokhara clover, small-flowered sweet clover, common melilot, small-flowered melilot, small melilot, sweet melilot, Californian lucerne and Hexham scent. In Australia and New Zealand, where it is naturalized, it is sometimes called King Island melilot or King Island clover.
It has a wide native distribution, ranging from Macaronesia and northern Africa, through Europe, and into temperate and tropical Asia. It is naturalized throughout most of the rest of the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, South America, Australia and New Zealand. In its introduced regions, it is frequently found along fields, roadsides, and other disturbed areas, and is typically considered a weed.
Melilotus indicus is used as a source of nectar for bees, as forage, and as a soil improver through its nitrogen fixing properties. As a salt tolerant species, it is a particularly useful forage crop where other legumes cannot grow. By 1907, it was in use at King Island for cattle fodder, explaining its Australian name.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Melilotus indicus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
