Pastel Beauty. Hare's-foot Clover, Trifolium arvense, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Yesterday I posted a photo of Rumex maderensis and remarked how unobtrusively it lives in the garden. Here today is another such plant, Hare's-foot Clover, Trifolium arvense. During my many visits to the Hortus I've never seen anyone stooping to look at what seems boringly gray from a yard or so. If you do examine this plant you'll be amazed by its beautiful pastel colors. Here they're enhanced by dew- or raindrops.
The famed writer of religious poetry - hymns and such - William Cowper (1731-1800), was also a poet of the more ordinary and of Nature. He wrote a not so ordinary poem - I think - about a pet Hare, 'Epitaph on a Hare'. He evokes that animal as utterly domesticated even eschewing dew. Here's the first stanza:
'Here lies, whom hound did ne’er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’s 'hallo’.'
Trifolium arvense is commonly named for the soft hair of a Hare's foot, here bedewed.
Pastel Beauty. Hare's-foot Clover, Trifolium arvense, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Yesterday I posted a photo of Rumex maderensis and remarked how unobtrusively it lives in the garden. Here today is another such plant, Hare's-foot Clover, Trifolium arvense. During my many visits to the Hortus I've never seen anyone stooping to look at what seems boringly gray from a yard or so. If you do examine this plant you'll be amazed by its beautiful pastel colors. Here they're enhanced by dew- or raindrops.
The famed writer of religious poetry - hymns and such - William Cowper (1731-1800), was also a poet of the more ordinary and of Nature. He wrote a not so ordinary poem - I think - about a pet Hare, 'Epitaph on a Hare'. He evokes that animal as utterly domesticated even eschewing dew. Here's the first stanza:
'Here lies, whom hound did ne’er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’s 'hallo’.'
Trifolium arvense is commonly named for the soft hair of a Hare's foot, here bedewed.