Sainfoin

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Accessible to honey bees, unlike red clover, because the corolla is shorter. It also supports long-tongued specialists including Eucera and the sainfoin-specialist Melitta dimidiata, which exists essentially nowhere the plant does not.

The corolla is short enough that honey bees and short-tongued bumblebees work it directly, which is the practical difference between sainfoin and red clover as bee plants.

Worth knowing

An outstanding forage plant on both counts, and one of the few that performs in a dry summer when white clover has stopped.

Flowering

In flower

May to July (northern hemisphere)

A long flowering period for a legume, and a second flush follows a mid-season cut.

When nectar flows

Secretes nectar generously and over a long season, and unusually it continues to do so in dry conditions where clovers shut down — a consequence of the deep taproot.

Year-to-year variation

More reliable than most legume crops because the taproot buffers drought, but the yield depends entirely on the area sown. Sainfoin honey is scarce not because the plant is a poor producer but because almost nobody grows it any more.

What it does to the honey

Pale golden, mild and clean with a distinct light floral quality and no bitterness. It crystallises to a fine smooth set.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on free-draining alkaline soil, and specifically at home on thin chalk and limestone where other legumes struggle. It will not tolerate waterlogging.

Size

40-80 cm tall in flower, with a taproot reaching two metres or more.

Native range

Central and southern Europe and western Asia, and cultivated well beyond that range.

Suits

Meadow or wildflower area, Farm scale, Large gardens

Maintenance, and the bit that matters

Long-lived on the right soil and short-lived on the wrong one. It resents competition from vigorous grasses.

• Sow on chalk or limestone soils — this is where it outperforms everything else.
• Do not fertilise. It fixes its own nitrogen and fertility encourages grasses that outcompete it.
• Cut for hay after flowering rather than during, or take the first flush and let the second flower.

What it looks like

An upright perennial with pinnate leaves and dense conical spikes of bright rose-pink pea flowers, each finely veined with darker pink. The spikes open from the bottom upwards over several days.