Found throughout the state. Common in lawns, waste places and pastures and less frequent in fallow fields and open woodland and along roadsides and railroads. Erith describes several varieties and forms and, no doubt, some of them are in Indiana.

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Non-Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous perennials, 5-20 cm tall, stems leafy, prostrate and rooting at the nodes, herbage glabrous.

Leaves: Trifoliate, leaflets obovate to oval, 5-20 mm long, margins serrulate, leaflets notched at the apex, with lanceolate to ovate stipules, 4-10 mm long and membranous, the leaves borne on long petioles.

Flowers: White, sometimes tinged with pink, corollas 4-10 mm long, borne in globose heads, 15-25 mm across, each calyx 4-6 mm long, with white tubes and green teeth, often with a purple spot at the sinus, pedicels 2-4 mm long, reflexed in age, borne on peduncles 5-30 cm long.

Fruits: Small, terete pods with 4-5 seeds.

Ecology: Found on roadsides and lawns, from 3,500-7,500 ft (1067-2286 m); flowering June-September.

Distribution: Introduced from Europe and widely distributed throughout America.

Notes: Look to the prostrate and rooting stems and the leaflets notched at the apex to help identify this species. Kearney and Peebles report that this species was often used in lawn mixtures.

Synonyms: None

Editor: LCrumbacher 2011

Etymology: Trifolium comes from the Latin meaning "three-leaved", while repens means having creeping and rooting stems.

Perennial; stems creeping, sending up long-petioled lvs and long- peduncled heads; stipules connate beyond the level of adnation to the petiole to form a pale, tubular- amplexicaul sheath, but the tips separate; lfls broadly elliptic to obovate, rounded to retuse at the summit, 1-2 cm; fls 7-11 mm, distinctly pedicellate; cal glabrous, the tube 1.8-3 mm, the nerves leading to the acute sinuses sharply defined and ending in a purple spot; cal-lobes narrowly triangular, acuminate, unequal, the longest about equaling the tube; cor white or tinged with pink, the standard elliptic-obovate, rounded at the tip, exceeding the obtuse wings; 2n=32 (64). Native of Eurasia, commonly planted and escaped in lawns and roadsides throughout most of temperate N. Amer. All summer.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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