MIXED MESSAGE
YELLOW ALFALFA
IN LAWNS
YELLOW ALFALFA FLOWERSFriday, 7:15 AM. 65 degrees, wind W, calm. The sky is somewhat overcast, it is hazy in the east and the barometer predicts rain, a mixed message for the day.
There is a prevalent yellow lawn and roadside weed in our region that I have assumed is an escaped agricultural legume, possibly a Trefoil, and let it go at that, but there is a lot of interest in it because it is so invasive in lawns. My friend Howard, a good plantsman in his own right, has called it Linaria, “butter and eggs.” I didn’t think it that, so have spent some time chasing it down, and I identify it as yellow alfalfa, or yellow Lucerne, Medicago falcata, which is a nitrogen fixing legume in the bean family. Actually one can make a good esthetic case for colorful, weedy lawns, although that goes against hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of our cultural history, for as Francis Bacon said in 16th Century England, “there is nothing more pleasing to the eye than green grass, closely shorn.
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