The field blooming with multi-colored paints looks luxurious: a solid carpet of greenery and a wide variety of flowers, slightly swaying from the slightest breeze. And what flavors!
Among such an abundance, one surprisingly delicate and modest wild flower can be distinguished - clover. The people call these flowers - porridge.
General information
A characteristic feature of this, as it turned out, magnificent plant is that the pollinating insects, and the only ones, are bumblebees.
Practically all species of this plant are pubescent meadow plants, quite resistant to trampling, pleasing to the eye with their flowering from the very beginning of summer to autumn.
Porridge flowers are pretty and therefore often used to create perennial lawns and lawns. These useful and beautiful plants will be discussed here.
And to imagine how they look, one has only to remember the popular name. This is the same porridge plant that many tasted in childhood, tearing off individual flowers from a spherical inflorescence. Thanks to the nectar hidden inside at the stem of the petal, they have a pleasant sweetish taste.
Many people know the flower porridge. He has more than one name: woodpecker, redhead, woodpecker,red carpet, honey cake, fever grass, honey flower, meadow shamrock, bee porridge, cuckoo bread, bee bread and many others are all folk options.
Of course, many plants are popularly called porridge, especially during their flowering. But here we are talking about clover.
Description
Kashka (a flower, the photo of which is presented in the article) is a genus of a plant from the Legume family. In total, it has approximately 250 species. These herbaceous plants can be both annual and perennial. Their rhizomes become stiff with age, and the flowers are collected in a small round head. Each mature small bean contains only two seeds.
There is another important feature of clover. The roots of this plant develop small tubers, which are due to a special bacterium (Bacillus radicicola). In this regard, the soil absorbs free nitrogen from the atmosphere. Therefore, clover belongs to plants that contribute to good soil enrichment with necessary and important fertilizer.
Porridge flowers in nature are white, red, pink and other colors.
Bob is a clover fruit that is typical for the whole family. It consists of two opening doors with seeds inside. Thanks to them, porridge breeds well. With their help, you can breed this plant both in household plots and in gardens.
Learn more about varieties
There are different types of clover for growing in gardens:
- Mountain has flowers,like the flowers of a creeping clover. But this is not creeping, but erect tall plant.
- Meadow clover blooms with red flowers, but with leaves with a whitish corner in the form of the letter "l".
- Medium clover is very similar to the meadow clover, but its leaves are more elongated and without any special signs in the form of a letter, like the above-mentioned species.
- Hybrid has the original color of the flowers: they are whitish at the base, and pink or red above.
There are many other species in Europe: white creeping clover, Swedish, pink, red (or blood-colored), yellow and others. Below we describe in more detail some of the most famous and common.
White porridge
The most common flower is creeping clover (with creeping shoots). This is a perennial herbaceous plant with alternate leaves, consisting of 3 leaflets.
The flowers of this porridge are white, enclosed in a five-toothed tubular calyx, have a slight pinkish tint. The two lower petals, fused laterally, form something similar to a boat, and the other two are located on the sides like oars, and the third hangs like a sail. It is this structure of the flower that is characteristic of many species from the legume family.
Flowers of this species are collected in inflorescences of several pieces per shoot, and therefore the lawn with blooming white clover looks amazingly beautiful. In addition to all of the above, this porridge is also famous for its rather pleasant honey aroma.
Creeping clover is short so it grows well andamong tall plants, forming a soft and delicate continuous carpet under them.
Pink porridge
The flower (Swedish clover) has a beautiful delicate pink color. It is a biennial plant, but perennial is more common. The bright green stems are branched, about 30 to 90 centimeters high.
Elliptical leaves are light to dark green in color. The flowers are painted in pink-white and white shades, collected in a spherical rounded head. The plant blooms in June and July.
About the miraculous red porridge
The most useful and widely cultivated is red clover. It grows throughout Siberia, as well as in Europe. It is an excellent fodder plant, the cultivation of which appeared in the sixteenth century.
Red clover is especially known as a cancer protector. It is often recommended by herbalists for cancers of the breast, lymphatic system, and ovaries. It is used in the treatment of oncological diseases in many countries of the world.
In addition, red porridge is a flower that has a diuretic, expectorant, emollient, diaphoretic, antiseptic and excellent anti-inflammatory effect. Flowers are also used for anemia, cough, rheumatism, malaria, colds and other diseases.
Clover has been proven effective in various skin diseases: childhood eczema and psoriasis. It is also used for gynecological diseases.
Fluffy yellow clover
All the above types of porridge do not exhausta huge variety of native species of this plant genus.
You should also pay attention to representatives with sunny golden flowers. These include perennial clovers that are very similar to each other: rustling, plain and dark-colored. All of them, like the above-mentioned species, grow in nature on the edges, meadows and clearings.
The cutest of these cereals is plowed clover (popularly - "seals"). It is a small annual plant, heavily pubescent with delicate soft hairs.
Application
In general, porridge flowers are not only beautiful and useful for people. They also help many garden plants. Especially good for apple trees: they do not allow weeds to grow, enrich the soil with nitrogen and look spectacular under a tree.
Also, porridge is used in agriculture as feed (hay) for livestock.
Some of history
An excellent clinical effect was achieved in the treatment of a wide variety of diseases with the help of red clover in ancient China, as well as in America (more than a hundred years ago). It has long been used to treat diseases of the gallbladder, intestines, liver, gout.
Both its leaves and flowers have long been used in alternative medicine as a source of calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, chromium, phosphorus and vitamins A, B, C. Red clover perfectly cleanses the lymph and blood, normalizes the outflow of bile and activity of the entire intestine.
Conclusion
Kashka in Russia grows in wastelands and has a reputation among the people as a weed. However, she has fully earned the right to be grown in front gardens, at least interspersed with other plants as a background. Clover will give a pleasant freshness to lawns with thick and juicy green leaves and bright cute flowers.
