PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Trifolium / Egyptian Clover
Wikimedia Commons — CC, credited & licensed per image
Fabaceae family

Egyptian Clover Trifolium alexandrinum

Deer favourite — Rated highly palatable to browsing deer — so where deer are around, expect this one to get nibbled. It's a documented preference, not a certainty: pressure swings with the place and season, and a fenced or low-deer yard may be untouched.
Also known as: Berseem clover

Egyptian Clover is an introduced annual herb, found in the lower 48 states. It grows to 1.5 ft and blooms Mar in part shade – shade, with brown fruit.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Part shade – shade
Soil & moisture
Medium moisture
Soil pH
6.5–8
Fertility need
Medium
Adapts to
Medium (loam), Fine (clay)
Hardiness
USDA zone 7+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Height
1.5 ft
Spread
None — clumping
Growth rate
Rapid
Growth form
Single crown
Lifespan
Annual
Foliage
Broadleaf · fine texture
Active growth
Spring & summer
Fruit
Brown
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Spring seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Deer browsing
High browsed readily
Resprouts if cut
No
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Nitrogen fixer — Fixes atmospheric nitrogen through root-nodule bacteria — builds soil fertility for itself and its neighbours, cutting fertiliser need.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Mar — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~122 caterpillar species

Trifolium supports ~122 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is an exceptional genus.

Recorded feeding on Trifolium in North America, including:

Achyra rantalis · Garden Webworm Moth Acrolophus popeanella · Clemens' Grass Tubeworm Moth Acronicta dactylina · Fingered Dagger Acronicta oblinita · Smeared Dagger Moth Actebia fennica · owlet moth Agnorisma badinodis · Pale-Banded Dart
+ 8 more species →
Agrochola helvola · Flounced Chestnut Agrotis gladiaria · Swordsman Dart Agrotis ipsilon · Dark Sword-Grass Agrotis malefida · Rascal Dart Agrotis subterranea · owlet moth Agrotis venerabilis · Venerable Dart Anacamptodes humaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Anavitrinella pampinaria · Common Gray
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 46 bee visitors

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Trifolium is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

46 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Egyptian Clover — the 12 most-recorded:

Colletes maidli · cellophane bee Andrena canadensis · Canada Andrena · ✦ specialist Andrena gelriae · mining bee Andrena intermedia · mining bee Andrena labialis · mining bee Andrena wilkella · mining bee
+ 6 more bees →
Anthidium loti Anthophora aestivalis · digger bee Bombus argillaceus · bumble bee Bombus pomorum · bumble bee Bombus sichelii · bumble bee Bombus veteranus · bumble bee
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024. Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI → · ✦ = pollen-specialist bee (Smith et al. 2024)
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (32) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[17] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[19] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[21] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[22] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[23] Nitrogen fixation — Werner et al. 2014 (Dryad, CC0)
[26] Other common names — Wikidata (CC0)
[28] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[29] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[30] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[31] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[32] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…