Subterranean Clover - Trifolium subterraneum

Low, hairy, prostrate plant. Leaves broadly heart shaped and variable in size. Flowers white or whitish, 8 to 14 mm in clusters at the base of leaves, with a mix of fertile and sterile florets. Uniquely, the flower heads bury themselves in the ground after flowering and as fruit ripens.

A mix of sterile and fertile florets; sterile flowers are without corollae and are slender, rigid, palmately lobed calyces.  

The County Recorder has asked for a specimen of this plant to be retained for verification

Dry grassy habitats, cliffs and rocky places with shallow soil, and preferring sandy or fine gravelly soils.

May and June.

Annual.

Local and often coastal, mainly in the southern half of Britain.

Rare in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 3 of the 617 tetrads.

In the current checklist (Jeeves 2011), it is listed as Native; free-draining sandy grassland; now apparently confined to the Soar Valley.

It is on the Rare Plant Register