"They are extremely fresh-looking, as if it were the springtime."
Observation by Mike Brook:
Not sure if this is one of those late-blooming plants that we heard about in the webinar a couple of weeks ago, but I thought it was unusual enough to send in. As you can see in these photos, the vast majority of the clover is brown and dry. However, notice some of the new blooms. They are extremely fresh-looking, as if it were the springtime. They didn't appear to be old blooms that were simply hanging around - they seemed to be new.
Katie Spellman, Ecologist at the International Arctic Research Center, writes:
This is a very neat observation. My friend, Dr. Christa Mulder, and I just finished writing up a study we did comparing how native and introduced species like the clover you have observed are acting in the fall. We tracked the phenology of the leaves and flowers of around 40 species every week to see if the introduced species could take advantage of longer growing seasons. We found that the clovers can keep producing new leaves and flowers all the way up until the snow hits. This may not be an advantage to them, however, as it puts them at risk of getting damaged by frost, and producing flowers that will never get a chance to make seeds, which is costly. It is probably good for pollinators to have this late season floral resource. It is very interesting!
