Years ago when I was still circuit-riding in Montana, the UUA had its General Assembly of the denomination in June as usual. It was in some back east city, hotter than skunk as my mother-in-law used to say. I don't remember much more about it. My return to Helena was indelible -- I can summon in up anytime.
It must have been a wet year because the sweet clover was everywhere, so much of it that the air was sweet as honey. Helena was pleasantly warm. The lone airport taxi had already taken a load into the town, so I had to wait for it to come back, but no worries -- I had been exhausted and cranky, but now I sat on a curb and blissed out.
I did know what made that ambrosial smell: it is coumadin which is also the "sweet" in sweetgrass and sweetpine. I always wondered why sweet clover wasn't among the Blackfeet smudge sources, but it was because it is a "weed," an exogenous plant like spotted knapweed but far more benign than the lavendar mist of knapweed with its chemical that kills every other plant around it. Oppositely, sweet clover is a legume that enriches the soil with nitrogen.
As early as the 16th century sweet clover was brought in from Eurasia as forage, More recently it has been used to address erosion because it is so vigorous and likely to spread. Its root system goes deep and breaks up hardpan. This quality soon caused it to fill the barrow pits along every road and to delay horses who want to snatch as much as they can instead of paying attention to where the rider wants to go.
When the practice of smudging developed, there was no sweetclover on this continent. Tobacco is valued as an insect control and for smoking, carefully grown in the small ecological niches where it is believed "little people" take care of it. Sweet grass grows in swampy places and sweet balsam pine grows in the Sweetgrass Hills, so those landmarks should be call "Sweet Pine Hills."
"It is the most drought-tolerant of the commercially available legumes. Sweet clover is a major source of nectar for domestic honey bees as hives near sweetclover can yield up to 200 pounds of honey in a year. Sweetclover has been used as a phytoremediation—phytodegradation plant for treatment of soils contaminated with dioxins." Sweetgrass and white sage, another popular smudge, have been exploited commercially to the point that they are overharvested. But sweetclover is mostly considered a weed and left alone.
Anyway, the plant has a dark side. It's a legume which means it's vulnerable to mold and rot. More than that, the seductive sweetness of coumadin is accompanied by its ability to thin blood. It's in the blood thinner of medicine and it's how rat poison works by thinning the blood of small mammals enough to kill them. If a cow eats enough moldy sweetgrass, it will kill them, too.
The biggest problem is during birth, a wound or if surgery is required, because it will promote bleeding. Dicoumarol can pass through the placenta so affects the calf, even unborn. Vets say a rancher should take particular care to avoid moldy sweetclover for at least a month before birth is due. North Dakota State University Diagnostic Laboratory can test for moldy hay. This was a wet year and people cut hay early, so it may have gotten moldier than is desirable.
From the unknown author in Wikipedia: "Melilotis officinalis is native to Europe and Asia and has been introduced to North America as a forage crop. It commonly grows in calcareous loamy and clay soils with a pH above 6.5 and can tolerate cold temperatures and drought; it does not tolerate standing water or acidic soils, with a pH of 5.5 as the plant's lowest limit. Common places where it can be found include open disturbed land, prairies, and savannahs, and it grows in full or partial sunlight. It is an invasive species in areas where it has been introduced, especially in open grasslands and woodlands where it shades and outcompetes native plant species.
"Sweet clover contains coumarin that converts to dicoumarol, which is a powerful anticoagulant toxin, when the plant becomes moldy. This can lead to bleeding diseases (internal hemorrhaging) and death in cattle. Consequently, hay containing the plant must be properly dried and cured, especially in wet environments."
I've never tried smudging with sweet clover, but maybe it's time I tried. It's nearly out of season. What's flowering now is sunflowers, the low soft kind along roads, but I've never tried smudging a sunflower either. I think I'll pass but look around for some sweetclover, if not this fall then next summer.
Since this land was once at the bottom of the shallow inland sea of the Cretaceous Era when coal was laid down, it is indeed calcareous from all the little shelly creatures who became limestone, is alkali from sea water, and is sunny for lack of trees. This inland sea was an extension of the Arctic Ocean which didn't seem so possible in the days before it began melting. It emptied when the uprising of the Rocky Mountains tilted the prairie enough to pour the water out through the Mississippi River complex. People who drive through here and say they see nothing are simply not aware of what they should look for.
It's possible to buy sweet clover seed commercially. I bought sweetgrass plugs one year, but now that town water is metered, I don't sprinkle so my yard is too dry. Maybe I'll see what it would be like to have a yard full of sweetclover.
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