Seasonal Wild Flowers

White Melilot

Melilotus albus

Fabaceae

July to August

It is found throughout the country but is absent from parts

of the North and the Southwest.

See the BSBI distribution map for White Melilot

It is a neophyte which was introduced as a fodder crop

(Bokhara Clover) and as an alien contaminant of Lucerne,

bird-seed and wool.

It was first found in the in the wild in the 1820s and grows

on fields and waste ground, and by paths, railways and

roads.

White Melilot is an annual or biennial, nitrogen-fixing herb

growing up to 1.5m.

The flowers are white, up to 5mm, and in a slender spike

(very similar to the Yellow Ribbed and Golden Melilot).

Leaves are trefoils

Stems are ribbed

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White Melilot, salt marsh dyke,

Walberswick, Suffolk

Flower spike

Close-up of flowers and ribbed stem

Trefoil leaves