Alpine clover

Trifolium alpinum, the alpine clover, is a low perennial herb of the Fabaceae family native to the high mountain pastures of the Alps, Pyrenees, and northern Apennines, where it grows between 1,700 and 3,100 metres on acidic, granitic or schistose soils. The plant is remarkable for its deep, stout, woody taproot, reaching as much as a metre in length and a centimetre in diameter, with a sweet liquorice-like flavour. The aerial shoots form a low tuft of long-petioled, ternate leaves bearing three narrow lanceolate leaflets up to five centimetres long. From June through August, leafless flowering stems rise to twenty centimetres, terminating in compact, rounded heads of large, fragrant, pink to purplish-red pea-flowers 18 to 25 millimetres long. The plant favours rocky alpine meadows and stabilises eroded slopes.