Status: Endangered

Habitat: This plant is found in prairie remnants along the Des Plains River in Illinois, in thin soils over limestone substrate. In Alabama and Tennessee it lives in prairie-like areas on the edges of cedar glades. It favors sites with a wet spring and fall and a dry summer.

Why It's Threatened: Surviving today at only 14 sites, this clover and its habitat are threatened by land development. Leafy prairie-clover is especially vulnerable to commercial and residential development and to road construction. Other threats include off-road vehicle use and grazing by rabbits and deer.

Fire suppression practices have eliminated the wildfires which once regularly cleared prairie grasslands of the encroaching woods. Now the expansion of shrubs and trees threatens this clover, which needs hot, sunny sites to survive.

Fact Sheet created 1997

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