Found in grassland all over the country, this plant is sometimes sown by farmers as a crop to re-introduce nitrogenous content to the soil typically following  the cropping of cereals or wheat.  This means that a good deal of what you see in our intensively farmed English countryside is actually planted. But not the one above which although growing in stony ground was as splendid a plant of Trifolium pratense as I have ever seen.

Trifolium pratense is one of the commonest plants in the British Isles growing all over mainland Britain, Ireland and the outer islands including Shetland and St. Kilda

LHS: Edge of Tobermory Harbour, Mull, Scotland, 17th June 2001 RHS: Gaitbarrows, 25th May 2004

Added on 6th November 2004, amended 5th February 2005, updated 16th February 2012