In the right environment, Caucasian clover offers significant advantages over white clover including greater persistence, drought tolerance and drymatter production.
A recently produced Beef + Lamb New Zealand Factsheet about this often-overlooked clover outlines its attributes, particularly on low nitrogen sites, and how these can be harnessed to drive livestock production and help stabilise soil.
Caucasian clover is a perennial clover and while it takes longer to establish than white clover, its large taproot and underground stems means that it survives high summer surface soil temperatures as well as the cold. It is more tolerant of infertile soils than white clover and better tolerates some insect and nematode pests.
Field trials carried out at Lincoln University showed that Caucasian clover produced more drymatter than white clover at both irrigated (12 t DM/ha/year compared to 9.5 t DM/ha/year) and dryland sites (9.4 t DM/ha/year compared to 7.0 t DM/ha/year).
Its higher drymatter production means that Caucasian clover has the ability to fix more nitrogen than white clover. Nitrogen drives both pasture quality and livestock production.
Caucasian clover has blue-green leaves that are around three times the length of white clover leaflets. The plant has a 20% faster rate of leaf photosynthesis than white clover when water is freely available and over 30% when water is limited. This means Caucasian clover produces more drymatter than white clover irrespective of water availability.
Sowing and Establishment
Because Caucasian clover rhizobia are not present in New Zealand soils, the seed must be freshly inoculated at higher than normal rates to ensure over 200,000 rhizobia/seed.
This is especially important where seed is broadcast.
The best time to sow Caucasian clover is spring. The seedlings need to accumulate 1600 degrees before April to ensure crown and rhizome shoots develop before winter. In North Canterbury, this means sowing before 1 November and even earlier in cooler regions.
While Caucasian clover germinates and emerges at the same rate as white clover, it takes longer to grow crown shoots and initiate secondary shoot production.
Because of this, Caucasian clover plants don’t compete well against weeds and other pasture species. Resident vegetation will therefore need to be controlled during establishment.
Caucasian clover does particularly well in areas with low soil nitrogen as the seedlings can better compete against grasses under nitrogen stress.
Caucasian clover can be sown in a mix with herbs such as plantain and chicory as these act as a nursery plant to the clover seedlings. Slower establishing grasses such as timothy and tall fescue can also be sown with Caucasian clover.
While Caucasian clover can be sown in a mix with other clovers, seeding rates of red and white clover would need to be reduced by over half.
More information
Learn more about how to use Caucasian clover (PDF, 687KB).