A dense stand of white clover showing the typical trifoliate leaves, a flower head and numerous drying seed heads
With Ken Slee
White Clover (Trifolium repens)
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White clover is native to Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. It has been introduced to other areas around the world, including the cooler and wetter parts of Australia, to increase the productivity of pastures. It is now so widely distributed in southern Australia that most people would probably assume that it has always been here. The botanical name Trifoliumrepens derives from the Latin tres, meaning ‘three’, folium meaning ‘leaf’ and repens‘creeping’ – in other words a three-leaved plant with a creeping growth habit.
White clover is a ‘perennial’, which means that in a suitable environment individual plants will live for a number of years. The related sub-clover ( Trifolium subterraneum) that has also been widely introduced in Australia is by comparison an ‘annual’ – a plant that germinates in spring, sets seed and dies out in summer.
White clover is excellent feed for grazing animals as it is high in protein and carbohydrates and has very high digestibility. Compared to other feeds it is often higher in minerals such as calcium and phosphorus as well. White clover fixes nitrogen in the soil so it also increases the growth of grasses and other species that it is associated with.
Given that most sambar country in Victoria is native bushland with shallow infertile soils and dense tree and scrub understory you may be wondering what white clover has to do with the scene. Well, it is an important food for sambar in two situations, on farm fringe country where there is improved pasture and on the high plains that have traditionally been grazed by the mountain cattlemen. I won’t go into the former situation but the latter I find much more interesting …
The best of the high plain areas (including places such as Aberfeldy, Connors Plains, Snowy Plains, Dargo High Plains and Nunniong in Gippsland) are areas of ancient basalt volcanic rock. Basalt breaks down to form a relatively fertile soil that at lower altitudes are invariably cleared and intensively farmed – much of south-western Victoria, but also other smaller areas fall into this category.
The high plains, because of their harsh winter climate, have never been developed for agriculture apart from their use for summer grazing by cattle driven up from lowland home properties. However, the combination of relatively fertile basalt soils and high rainfall has meant that white clover, either deliberately introduced by miners and cattlemen, or inadvertently introduced in fodder or via cattle dung, has thrived to the extent that it now occurs widely there.
For the past 160 years cattle have been grazed on the high plains and have taken advantage of the introduced white clover for at least part of that time. That is, until recently when the decision was taken to remove cattle from Victoria’s Alpine National Park which takes in much of the best of the basalt areas.
One result of the exclusion of cattle from the Alpine National Park has been to free up a feed resource for the sambar across a wide area (there are virtually no other grazing animals in this country besides a few rabbits and the odd wombat). Not surprisingly, this excellent feed source with its high protein, carbohydrate and mineral content, particularly when compared with the other feeds on offer, has delivered benefits to the deer - and to deer hunters.
Sambar feeding on white clover seem to do exceedingly well over the summer months while most of the stags are growing their next set of antlers and the hinds are heavily pregnant and in some cases also feeding a calf. If stags are ever going to produce a magnificent set of antlers, this is the environment that will give them every opportunity to do so!
Evidence that sambar are using white clover may be hard to recognise as deer tracks may be difficult to see. However, in my experience two things tend to be giveaways – the presence of mushy or ‘hand grenade’ dropping and the frequent occurrence of deer beds (flattened vegetation) where the animals have taken time off to bed between feeding bouts. A deer shot in the very best white clover country between November and May is likely to have a rumen that is full of this plant to the exclusion of just about anything else.
While the white clover country of the basalt high plains is great feeding country for deer over the warmer months it is subject to blizzards and snow from about mid-May through until mid-October which make for much tougher living and hunting conditions, and also pushes most of the deer off the tops into the nearest sheltered gullies. This, along with difficult winter access and summer hunting bans, makes the window to hunt most of this country very short – a few weeks from mid-October to mid-December and from mid-February to the end of April
White clover and native and introduced grasses along with other introduced weeds such as thistles often occur together on the fertile soils of the basalt high plains
The basalt high plains country where white clover occurs is usually dominated by an over-storey of snow gums with a mixed understory of shrubs such as alpine pepper and native grasses
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