Trifolium wormskioldiiLehm.

cows clover

WFO wfo-0000182219 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Trifolium wormskioldii, photographed by Drew Meyer
fig. a Drew Meyer, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 204837020

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
2699917
Filed as
Trifolium wormskioldii Lehm.
Det. by
A. Tiehm 2022-01-01
Collected
E. J. Neese 1980-07-02
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 12 botanical countries

Regions where Trifolium wormskioldii is native: Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Mexico Northwest, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming ArizonaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoIdahoMexico NorthwestNevadaNew MexicoOregonUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Trifolium wormskioldii, 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
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Mexico Northwest MXN
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
Oregon ORE
Utah UTA
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO

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 1,286 in flower of 1,310 examined

Proportion of examined Trifolium wormskioldii in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 1 too few examined
Feb 2 5 40% 12% to 77%
Mar 27 28 96% 82% to 99%
Apr 241 249 97% 94% to 98%
May 312 314 99% 98% to 100%
Jun 281 282 100% 98% to 100%
Jul 244 248 98% 96% to 99%
Aug 102 103 99% 95% to 100%
Sep 51 53 96% 87% to 99%
Oct 18 18 100% 82% to 100%
Nov 5 6 83% 44% to 97%
Dec 3 3 too few examined

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Trifolium wormskioldii 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. 1,286 of 1,310 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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.

When it blooms, where you are 3 states

Peak flowering moves by 2 months across these states. A national average would be the wrong answer to a local question, so each of these is computed only from observations made in that state.

StatePeaksObservations in flower
California Aug 1,105
Oregon Jun 78
Washington Jun 60

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,017 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.6 °C 6.5 °C 9.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.5 °C 18.5 °C 28.9 °C
Annual rainfall 442 mm 1,226 mm 3,655 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 8 mm 41 mm 343 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,017 research-grade observations of Trifolium wormskioldii that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 23 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.

  • Lupinaster wormskioldii C.Presl
  • Trifolium atropurpureum Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray
  • Trifolium calocephalum Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray
  • Trifolium fendleri Greene
  • Trifolium fimbriatum Lindl.
  • Trifolium fistulosum A.E.Vaughan
  • Trifolium heterodon Torr. & A.Gray
  • Trifolium involucratum var. fendleri (Greene) McDermott
  • Trifolium involucratum var. fimbriatum (Lindl.) McDermott
  • Trifolium involucratum var. heterodon (Torr. & A.Gray) S.Watson
  • Trifolium involucratum var. kennedianum McDermott
  • Trifolium kennedianum (McDermott) A.Nelson & J.F.Macbr.
  • Trifolium kennedianum (McDermott) A.Nelson & J.F.Macb
  • Trifolium ortegae Greene
  • Trifolium ortegae f. pumilum A.E.Vaughan
  • Trifolium spinulosum Douglas
  • Trifolium triste Nutt.
  • Trifolium willdenovii var. fimbriatum (Lindl.) Ewan
  • Trifolium willdenovii var. kennedianum (McDermott) Ewan
  • Trifolium wormskioldii var. fimbriatum (Lindl.) Jeps.
  • Trifolium wormskioldii var. kennedianum (McDermott) Jeps.
  • Trifolium wormskioldii var. ortegae (Greene) Barneby
  • Trifolium wormskioldii var. wormskioldii

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.