Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of several plants of the genus Melilotus of the pea family that are native to Eurasia, have compound leaves with three leaflets and narrow clusters of small white or yellow flowers, and are sometimes grown for forage.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun erect annual or biennial plant grown extensively especially for hay and soil improvement
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rolig commented on the word sweet clover
melilot
May 18, 2008
ruzuzu commented on the word sweet clover
"Melilotus, known as Melilot or Sweet Clover, is a genus in the family Fabaceae. Members are known as common grassland plants and as weeds of cultivated ground. Originally from Europe and Asia, it is now found worldwide.
Like the most fragrant of the plants called sweet grass, this clover is commonly named for its sweet smell, which in both plants is due to its high content of the perfume agent coumarin (which is bitter to the taste, and is probably produced by the plant to discourage ingestion by animals). Coumarin, in turn, is used by fungi to form a poisonous anticoagulant in moldly or spoiled sweet clover, called dicoumarol. This compound was the historical cause of so-called sweet clover disease, the analysis of which led eventually to the production of the warfarin family of anticoagulants."
--From the Wikipedia article for Melilotis
April 14, 2011