Yellow Sweetclover, Melilotus officinalis

Plant - Flower color the only difference. Biennial with extensive taproot system; branched stems 3 to 6 ft. tall; leaves serrate all way around margin; glabrous, with awllike stipules; flowers white or yellow in narrow, erect racemes; plant contains bittertasting compound "coumarin". A derivative of this compound may inhibit blood-clotting in mammals, but rarely a problem unless sweetclover is fed as a 'moldy' dry hay. Sweetclover is infrequently cultivated as a forage, more often planted as a 'green manure' crop to provide N in crop rotations. Quite drought tolerant. Common along roadsides. Has invaded rangelands in northern Wyoming. Not very palatable to livestock, nor is it highly digestible.

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Greenhouse Yellow Sweetclover plant.
Yellow Flowered, biennial species.

Entire leaf margin serrated.
Yellow Sweetclover and Alfalfa
Trifoliate (pinnate compound) leaves.


White sweetclover has a white flower, leaves and growth identical, but considered an annual.
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