Description

Tick Clover or Tick Trefoil (Desmodium triflorum) is a mat-formed, creeper vine, grows straight to the ground, commonly found in plane areas, grounds etc., leaves are green, divided in to three leaflets, small and tri pinnate, oblong, little hairy, 1 cm long and up to 8 mm wide. Flowers are pale pink, petal obovate, size up to 5 mm long. Pods are up to 1.8 cm long and about 2.4 mm wide, the stems are either green or purplish. The seeds are in a pod.

Characteristics:

Creeping Tick Trefoil is a much branched, mat-forming creeping herb, with clover-like leaves. Leaves are divided into 3 leaflets, the lower leaves sometimes undivided. Leaflets are inverted-egg shaped, to inverted-heart shaped, rounded and notched at the tip. They are mostly less than 1 cm long, up to 9 mm wide, sometimes with 2 white marks. Flowers arise few in fascicles, opposite the leaves, on stalks 3-8 mm long, lengthening in fruit to just over 1 cm. Flowers are reddish-violet or pale pink, standard petal obovate, 4-5 mm long. Pods are up to 1.7 cm long, about 2.3 mm broad, 3-7-jointed. Creeping Tick Trefoil is a pantropical herb. It is also found in the Himalayas, up to altitudes of 2300 m.

Medicinal Uses:

Tick-trefoils are also useful as living mulch and as green manure, as they are able to improve soil fertility via nitrogen fixation. Most also make good fodder for animals including bobwhite, turkey, grouse, deer, cattle and goats. Some Desmodium species have been shown to contain high amounts of tryptamine alkaloids, though many tryptamine-containing Desmodium species have been transferred to other genera.