Red Clover (Trifolium praetense) as you can see in the photo above, isn’t red. It’s purple. Crimson clover is red (and is super tasty if you can find it) and White clover is white with a slightly pink tinge.
Red clover grows abundantly in my yard ever since I tossed some seeds on the ground 8 years ago to cover a bare patch. Did the clover grow in that patch? Nope! The chickens ate most of the seeds. But a few must have survived because it’s all over the yard now and wasn’t before.
Red clover is edible and medicinal. I love eating the flowers as often as possible from the time they come up in late May until they start dying back in November. The greens are also edible, but I promise you, Thumper had it right.
The blossoms are basically big bunches of tiny flower heads. The whole flowers are sweet, and if you carefully tease each individual floret from the inflorescence, you will see why: a teeny tiny droplet of nectar at the base where the petals were attached. [I am praying that no botanist reads this and sends me to an early grave for this totally unscientific description]
I pick the flowers into a basket with other wild foods (mostly greens such as lamb’s quarters, amaranth, yellow dock, or whatever is growing at the time) and chop them up all together to sauté gently in butter in my cast iron pan. When my son asks “What’s for dinner?” my answer most of the summer long is usually something along the line of “Chicken and weeds.” He just nods and goes with it at this point.
In addition to being a nitrogen fixer for your soil, Red clover is a super food of nutrition:
- Vitamin C: An important antioxidant.
- Niacin (Vitamin B3): Part of the B vitamin complex.
- Thiamine (Vitamin B1): Also a B vitamin.
- Calcium: A mineral essential for bone health.
- Chromium: A trace mineral.
- Magnesium: Important for various bodily functions.
- Phosphorus: Another mineral crucial for health.
- Potassium: An electrolyte important for fluid balance and other processes.
- Vitamin A: A vitamin known for supporting vision and immune function.
For these reasons, I like to make a red clover infused vinegar to extract the vitamin and mineral content. This can be made into salad dressing or just used to cook your meals with later in winter when nutrients are more scarce.
It also contains phytoestrogens, which are plant compounds that mimic estrogen in the body. I made a video explaining more:
Red clover is also an awesome lymphatic stimulant and it can be combined with other lymphatic cleansing herbs such as Cleavers, Mullein, or Calendula in a blend to help support lymphatic flow. It’s also been said to help the body fight cancer, particularly breast cancer. It’s a great addition to herbal tea blends!
I tried making red clover jelly last week and I tasted some yesterday. This is the first (and hopefully only) time I will ever be disappointed by red clover. This stuff is virtually flavorless.
Update: Alexis Nicole (The Black Forager) told me this happened to her, too and she found she needed to steep the red clover for 12 hours to get a decent flavor.
I make Red Clover Tincture to sell in my Shop but be forewarned: the first time I tried red clover tincture to experiment and see how it would affect my body, I took a half dropperful every day for a week. By the end of the week, I got my period. I wasn’t due for my period for two more weeks!
Thankfully, it doesn’t have that affect on me when I just eat it as food. You would really have to eat a whole big salad bowl full of it to get a medicinal effect from red clover. When you ingest it as food, your body mostly takes in the nutritional content and the phytoestrogens aren’t concentrated enough to make a difference when absorbed through your intestinal lining.
Get my Making Tinctures Safely and Effectively PDF Guide Here
Anyway, I love the fact that I can start eating this plant in spring and continue eating it through autumn. It actually produces MORE blossoms the more often you pick it. This plant WANTS to feed you! I’m going to continue looking for new ways to eat and preserve it and I’m also going to continue pretending to be a sheep when I crawl through to weed my garden and just biting the flower heads off. Baaaaaa
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