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Fabaceae family

Purple Clover Trifolium purpureum

Purple Clover is an introduced annual herb, found in the lower 48 states. It grows to 1.4 ft.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
1.4 ft
Lifespan
Annual
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Chop-and-drop biomass — Soft, low-density wood is quick-growing and easy to cut back — coppice it and drop the trimmings in place as mulch.Open guide →
High-nutrient foliage — Above-average measured leaf nitrogen — its prunings make rich compost and mulch (the measured stand-in for folklore "dynamic accumulator" lists).Open guide →
derived roles
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 · 6 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 →

6 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Purple Clover :

Bombus fervidus · Yellow Bumblebee Bombus pascuorum · Common Carder Bumblebee Bombus appositus · White Shouldered Bumble Bee Bombus griseocollis · Brown-Belted Bumblebee Bombus huntii · Hunt Bumble Bee Bombus impatiens · Common Eastern Bumblebee
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024. Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
Wildlife & visitors 6 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Purple Clover — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
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 (2) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
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 (18) 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)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[07] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[10] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[11] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[13] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[16] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[17] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[18] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
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).

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