Trifolium purpureumLoisel.

purple clover

WFO wfo-0000213055 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Trifolium purpureum, photographed by Denis Bastianelli
fig. a Denis Bastianelli, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-01 / obs. 202463080

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 19 botanical countries

Regions where Trifolium purpureum is native: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Albania, Bulgaria, France, Greece, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Sicilia, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaPalestineTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaFranceGreeceNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSiciliaTürkiye-in-Europe
Native distribution of Trifolium purpureum, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
France FRA
Greece GRC
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Sicilia SIC
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 112 in flower of 125 examined

Proportion of examined Trifolium purpureum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 1 too few examined
Feb 1 1 too few examined
Mar 11 11 100% 74% to 100%
Apr 37 40 93% 80% to 97%
May 41 47 87% 75% to 94%
Jun 15 16 94% 72% to 99%
Jul 6 7 86% 49% to 97%
Aug 0 0 too few examined
Sep 0 2 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Trifolium purpureum observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 112 of 125 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 16 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Trifolium angustifolium subsp. desvauxii (Boiss. & C.I.Blanche) Ponert
  • Trifolium angustifolium subsp. purpureum (Loisel.) Gibelli & Belli
  • Trifolium angustifolium subsp. purpureum (Loisel.) Ponert
  • Trifolium angustifolium subvar. laxiusculum (Boiss. & C.I.Blanche) Gibelli & Belli
  • Trifolium angustifolium var. desvauxii (Boiss. & C.I.Blanche) Gibelli & Belli
  • Trifolium caerulescens É.Desv. ex Boiss.
  • Trifolium desvauxii Boiss. & C.I.Blanche
  • Trifolium desvauxii var. laxiusculum (Boiss. & C.I.Blanche) Boiss.
  • Trifolium laxiusculum Boiss. & C.I.Blanche
  • Trifolium loiseleurii Rouy
  • Trifolium loisleuri Rouy
  • Trifolium palavicum Hochst.
  • Trifolium purpureum f. latifolia Kožuharov
  • Trifolium purpureum f. simplex Kožuharov
  • Trifolium purpureum subsp. desvauxii (Boiss. & C.I.Blanche) Kožuharov
  • Trifolium purpureum var. laxiusculum (Boiss. & C.I.Blanche) Post

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.