Red clover is a perennial forage legume. It establishes and produces quickly but its poor persistence limits the lifespan to 2-3 years. It has a prostrate, stoloniferous growth habit. It is very palatable, nutritious and highly digestible. The deep taproot system, enables the plant to extract water from deep soil layers. It is most often used with White Clover in mixtures with grass species, thereby effectively improving the quality of a pasture. Red Clover has very good summer production (relative to White Clover) and this is the sought after quality and reason for including it with White Clover.

 

It requires a minimum average of 750 mm per year, however when produced under irrigation production is optimised and stress limited.