In article ,
Archimedes Plutonium NOdtgEMAIL wrote:

Monique Reed wrote:

If the flowers are still fresh and bright, the seed from those flowers
is not mature. You want brown, dry fruit on the plants. Why not just
let the infuctescences develop?

Yes, I found a good website showing various legume seeds:
http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/forag...hite_dutch.htm

I have got some research pots going to find out when they are viable seeds.

You can take the things apart and look for seeds, too.

I am guessing that clover and trefoil spread only via seeds and not by
rhizomes.

Instead of guessing, why not look at your clover plants and see what they do?
White (Dutch) clover, Trifolium repens, spreads by rhizomes in my lawn. That's
why it's called repens (creeping).

This would then beg the question of given a plot of land with a small patch
of
clover or trefoil, then how to mow and maintain the plot in order to get it
entirely
into clover or trefoil. I suppose setting the mowing height and to set the
mower so as to broadcast the seed. Has anyone researched how to mow a
plot of land in order to get it entirely into clover or trefoil?

You not only have to encourage the clover, you have to discourage everything
else. White clover alone doesn't make a very good sod. Observation will
show you that the clover starts growing relatively late in spring, and before
it does, you have an area that you can't walk on without damaging it.

White clover used to be component of most lawn grass mixtures before the advent
of broad leaf weedkillers, after which it was defined as a weed because the
weedkiller killed it.

I never water or fertilize my lawn and always mow high and leave the clippings
on it. I've got a mixed grass and clover sod that looks good and apart from
a few dandelions I control with a knife, is pretty much weed and pest free
without any chemical interventions.

The easiest way of getting some clover into your lawn is to toss the seed on
in the early spring as the frost is coming out of the ground.

At any rate, this all works for me in southern Ontario.