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.  

Records from this species should be confirmed by a County Recorder for botany.  It is on the VC55 Rare Plant Register, and therefore a specimen should not be taken.  Take detailed field photos and submit to NatureSpot as soon as possible; and if you think you have found it in a new location, inform the County Recorder as soon you can. (RPR)

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 Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi & Evans, 1988) it was present in 3 tetrads out of 617, but was not recorded in the Flora of Rutland (Messenger, 1971)

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 current VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall and Woodward, 2022) as Locally Rare; recent records mainly from Croft