Something's Missing

From Thomas Goodhart

Walking my dogs past the small brick church two blocks away, with probably the largest yard of grass in the entire neighborhood it is most noticeable. There has been an abundance of rain lately and whoever does their yard maintenance has gotten a little behind, understandably. This has allowed the white clover to take off ecstatically, flowering profusely as can be observed in the photo above. Some people don’t like clover in their lawn grass. They consider it a weed and pest. Not me. I love clover. I enjoy its ability to stay green even when some of its neighboring grass is turning brown and dormant. Clover is able to grow in soils that many grasses don’t necessarily do well in. Furthermore, growing alongside grasses, clover tends to out grow other species that we generally consider weeds. So generally, clover in your yard is a good thing. And the little white flowers are beautiful additions of nectary goodness. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

What I really enjoy about white clover is that as a legume—a family of plants that include peas, beans, lentils, alfalfa, peanuts, and even locust trees—it has evolved to grow symbiotically with rhizobia, a particular kind of soil bacteria. Symbiosis, the beautiful ability for two separate kinds of organisms or species to “work together” to each other’s benefit. So here’s the deal, plants need nitrogen to survive and fortunately one could think, our environment is simply immersed in nitrogen, 78 percent actually. Unfortunately, however, that atmospheric nitrogen is not in a form that is available to plants. That’s where our rhizobia come in. These crafty little critters have the uncanny ability of converting atmospheric nitrogen into a form that plants thrive on. Dwelling in root nodules of host plants—various species of legumes including white clover—rhizobia provides the plants with nitrogen in a form the plant can use while receiving from the plant sugars and proteins as well as oxygen that the bacteria needs to survive. It’s a win-win for both the legume plant and the bacteria! But it doesn’t stop there. Once that nitrogen has become available as part of the plant, it then can be available to those who consume the plant—think of all those plant protein rich foods mentioned earlier: beans, lentils, peanuts, etc. But even with species like clover or alfalfa, these plants provide higher protein content in the green parts which makes for excellent livestock feed. And still with plant die off, the nitrogen remains more readily available in the soil for other plants to use, thus another positive effect of that white clover in the lawn. The wonders of symbiosis!

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