Noticing Peas

My urban gardener friend, the one who thought all violets were purple (see Roses are red; Violets aren't...), well, her husband recently told me he how he'd like to see white clover in the front yard.

"Huh?"

"White clover. In the yard," he said, pointing at the architecturally rectangular piece of thick green turf, weed-whacked, edged and stiff as a board.

"White clover? In the yard? This yard?" I'm thinking, this guy's been in the sun too long. Or maybe he means something else, not the white clover I'm thinking of. I mean, gulp, that's a, uh, weedy thing. This man has actually made a declaration of war against dandelions and lamb's quarters and the like. He is big on chemicals. Ah, chemicals. It's the chemicals talking; they've gone to his head; they've fried his brain; he's dining with pink elephants. And suddenly he's got weeds on the brain. He has just surrendered everything he stands for ... in my mind, anyway. He has forsaken his belief system, just like that.

White clover (Trifolium repens) is not a weed in my universe, mind you, but to someone whom has dedicated his gardening life to the manipulation of the yard and death to weeds, well, it just didn't make sense. But that's beside the point. This isn't about Mr. and Mrs. Urban Gardener, weeds, or even White clover as such; this is about the Pea Family (Fabaceae) in general and how, unless they are a lupine or maybe Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius) or a Redbud tree, they are mostly overlooked and ignored, or treated as weeds. And overlooking or ignoring them is no mean feat; there are so many! And so many of those take some doing to ignore.

There are about 17,000 species in about 640 genera in the Pea Family. Lots of them are kind of weedy - White clover, Alsike clover (T. hybridum), Yellow and White Sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis and M. alba), Bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) - but some are more defiant, with big showy flowers, splashes of color, aggressive abundance. Some are butterfly host plants, or nectar sources. You ever try to ignore a clover when a big, beautiful Tiger Swallowtail is taking nectar from it? Or when a small, elegant Eastern Tailed blue is laying eggs on it? Granted, you might be focused on the butterfly, but surely you notice what it's landing on. Don't you?

And sure, Bird's-foot Trefoil is a roadside plant, obviously a weed and not worth noticing. Or is it? Because it is weedy, it grows with spirited abandon, covering the ground with masses of bright yellow flowers. Why would anyone ignore such a thing?

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