Skip to content

Your account

With an account, your progress (modules read, XP, badges, cards, notebook, pack, challenges) follows you on every device. Without one, it stays in this browser.

or
Low toxicity🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🍀 Clover and Daisy

Trifolium repens / pratense — Bellis perennis · Fabaceae (clover) — Asteraceae (daisy)

🌳 Temperate Europe🫒 Mediterranean🏔️ Mountains🌲 Boreal🍁 North America
🧠 To remember it“Three leaflets for clover, a rosette for daisy” — the two stars of edible lawns, with no dangerous confusion possible between them.
Clover and Daisy — Trifolium repens / pratense — Bellis perennis

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Two iconic and easy lawn plants. Clover (white or red) features the classic trifoliate leaf, each leaflet often marked with a pale crescent, and a globe-like white or pinkish-purple flower made of many small tubular florets. The daisy forms a tiny rosette of spatulate leaves flat on the ground, with a flower head showing a yellow center surrounded by fine white rays sometimes tinged with pink on the back.

  1. clover: 3 leaflets (rarely 4), often marked with a pale crescent
  2. clover: globe-shaped flower head made of numerous florets
  3. daisy: basal rosette of spatulate leaves, no leafy stem
  4. daisy: solitary flower head, yellow center, white rays
  5. both close or droop at night or during wet weather
Size5-20 cm (creeping clover), 5-15 cm (daisy)
Floweringapril-october (both, almost continuous in mild climates)
Habitatlawns, mown or grazed meadows, path edges

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Wood sorrel (false clover) (Oxalis spp.)none (also edible, but moderate oxalic acid intake)

To tell them apart: wood sorrel leaflets are inverted heart-shaped and fold downward sharply in the evening, whereas clover leaflets are oval and entire

🍽️ Eating it

Partsclover flowers, young clover leaves, daisy leaves and flowers, daisy flower buds
Seasonapril-october
Tasteclover: mild, slightly sweet and herbaceous; daisy: slightly bitter and peppery, close to mild wild arugula

Preparation : raw clover flowers in salads or dried for tea; cooked young clover leaves (raw ones in large amounts can cause bloating and contain mild antinutritional compounds); whole raw daisy in salads, flower buds pickled as mock capers

💊 Healing with it

red clover traditionally used for mild menopausal complaints (isoflavones); daisy traditionally used as a wound healer and mild expectorant

Level of evidence : etudes-limitees regarding red clover isoflavones for hot flashes; tradition for the daisy — EMA/HMPC for Trifolium pratense; tradition for Bellis perennis (Commission E)

⚠️ red clover is not recommended in cases of hormone-dependent cancer or alongside blood thinners (estrogenic and mild antiplatelet effects); limit raw clover intake in livestock (bloat risk), no notable danger for humans at culinary doses

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • clover: forage plant and nitrogen-fixing green manure — a good indicator of living soil
  • daisy: indicator of regularly mown lawn
Sources (3)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.