02/03/2019
💚we love red clover❤️
R E D C L O V E R
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Red Clover, Trifolium pratense. The clover of 'Clover Honey' and 'To be in Clover', this common ground cover with beautiful purple-pink flowers is used as both medicine for the soil and the body. .
Being in the Legume family, the roots 'fix' nitrogen to the soil, but how? Technically, they do not, but a special kind of bacteria (Rhizobiaceae) does. The bacteria enter the roots of the Red Clover, and live there in little colonies called nodules, exchanging nitrogen absorbed from the air for carbohydrates from the plant. Nitrogen is an essential element for plants and is quite abundant in air, but in a form unusable to plants. The bacteria absorb ambient nitrogen and convert it into a plant-usable form. Some of the converted nitrogen is leaked out, and the rest is given back to the soil when the plant decomposes.
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In herbalism, Red Clover builds the blood while gently stimulating the lymphatic and other eliminatory systems, while also having a clearing and sedating effect on the respiratory system. The flowers also seem to have an estrogenic action, although it is unknown exactly how. Cooling, sweet and salty in action, it is used both for acute and chronic imbalances, from lung problems to nutrient deficiencies. //
The flowers are a popular nectar source for bees, and people can also suck the flowers for the honey-like nectar (there are clover pudding recipes floating around on ye olde google).