On my Piney Woods Church Road saunter this morning, I encountered two new “common weed” wildflowers in bloom: the low hop clover (Trifolium campestre) and field madder (Sherardia arvensis). The low hop clover is a yellow flower native to Eurasia now common in most of North America; introduced by farmers to improve the soil and feed their livestock, low hop clover is also a wild edible plant. Field madder, also from Eurasia, commonly grows in farm fields and along road edges throughout the Eastern United States. It has minute flowers that are less than an eighth of an inch across. I only noticed it because I was sitting on the ground in one spot for several minutes, during yet another attempt to photograph a lobelia growing alongside a barbed wire fence.
