Recurrent Clover
There is much in these second crops of clover to interest the naturalist as well as the farmer. They are often grown for the purpose of the seed, and the amount of seed may depend a great deal on the agency of insects. Was it not about clover that the Darwinian paradox was made : the more maiden ladies (who keep cats, who destroy mice, who eat bees' nests) the better the clover? But the clover, so free of its tempting scent, is retentive of its honey, and only a few insects have tongues long enough to reach it. The tongues of hive bees vary. The Caucasian variety has one of the longest tongues and the English one of the shortest. It is a moot question, I believe, whether the popular Italian bee, which comes between these two in length of tongue, can suck honey from the common field clover. The beekeeper wants the honey, the seed-grower wants the flower fertilised. The second crop, which is the one usually grown for seed purposes, bears flowers with a rather shorter tube than the first and so is likely to set a higher proportion of seed. It is amusing to watch the progress of a particular flower-head. The fertilised florets go brown and lose their upright stance almost at once, and on occasion you may find one single upright bright- coloured floret stand erect among a brown and tumbled company. It alone has escaped matrimony. I asked the farmer whose clover field is under review whether he was growing his second crop for seed, but he answered with scorn, almost as if I had insulted him by the question: "We are farmers, not seed merchants." You may often find in the profession this sort of determination to play the part of straight farming, without trimmings. It is their pride to concentrate energy on making the land produce its definite crop, the whole crop and nothing but the crop.
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