Melilotus albusMedik.

White Sweetclover

WFO wfo-0000212815 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Melilotus albus, photographed by Jay Pruett
fig. a Jay Pruett, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 204245983
Melilotus albus, photographed by Violet T.
fig. b Violet T., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204974404
Melilotus albus, photographed by Jay Pruett
fig. c Jay Pruett, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204248620
Melilotus albus, photographed by bulatik
fig. d bulatik, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205988981
Melilotus albus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. e Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203617524
Melilotus albus, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. f Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202106478
Melilotus albus, photographed by Jochen Essig
fig. g Jochen Essig, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202740658
Melilotus albus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. h Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202492483

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 7,519 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 7,519 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 30 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Medicago alba E.H.L.Krause
  • Melilotus alba Medik.
  • Melilotus albus Desr.
  • Melilotus albus f. albus
  • Melilotus albus f. proliferus Dore
  • Melilotus albus var. annua Coe
  • Melilotus albus var. argutus (Rchb.) Rouy
  • Melilotus albus var. macrocarpus Rupr.
  • Melilotus angulatus Trautv.
  • Melilotus arboreus Castagne ex Ser.
  • Melilotus argutus Rchb.
  • Melilotus giganteus Trautv.
  • Melilotus kotschyi O.E.Schulz
  • Melilotus leucanthus W.D.J.Koch ex DC.
  • Melilotus melanospermus Besser ex Ser.
  • Melilotus officinalis subsp. albus (Medik.) H.Ohashi & Tateishi
  • Melilotus officinalis var. albus Mérat
  • Melilotus officinalis var. vulgaris (Willd.) Wahlenb.
  • Melilotus rugulosus Trautv.
  • Melilotus strictus Trautv.
  • Melilotus tenellus Wallr.
  • Melilotus urbani O.E.Schulz
  • Melilotus vulgaris Willd.
  • Melilotus vulgaris var. gigantea Gaudin

and 6 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.