Left: Bolander’s clover, photo by Trevor Van Loon (CC-BY 4.0)
Right: Austin’s astragalus, photo by Matt Berger (CC-BY 4.0)
The California Biodiversity Data Exchange needs your help to fill in data gaps using citizen science through the ongoing Counting Clovers and Mapping Milkvetches project on iNaturalist.
Clovers (genus Trifolium) and milkvetch (genus Astragalus) are widespread and abundant in many California ecosystems, but often overlooked. There are 153 species of Trifolium and Astragalus in California, 99 of which are tracked by the CNDDB!
So far, this project has catalogued 500+ observations of almost 50 CNDDB-tracked rare species, and there’s still time to hunt down a few more. Now is the perfect time to look for some of the higher-elevation montane species, such as Bolander’s clover (Trifolium bolanderi) in Yosemite or Austin’s astragalus (Astragalus austiniae) in the Tahoe basin.
The project curators have put together some helpful guides for how to identify clovers (PDF) and milkvetches (PDF), and which parts of the plant to focus on in your photos. Any iNaturalist observations of clovers and milkvetches you’ve made this spring or summer (March 1 – August 31, 2026) will be counted in the project, and any rare species you observe will be incorporated into future CNDDB updates.
Follow the project on iNaturalist for more updates and a peek at the species that have been observed so far!