Confused names of Trifoliums with reflexed flowers
This is an attempt to sort out the confusion regarding the correct names to apply to several species of Trifolium with reflexed flowers.
Trifolium productum occurs in northern California and Oregon, including the Klamath Mountains, Cascade Range, and northern and central Sierra Nevada. It was formerly known as T. kingii subsp. productum, and many published books simply refer to it as T. kingii.
Trifolium dedeckerae occurs in the southern Sierra Nevada (south of the San Joaquin-Kings River divide) and in the White Mountains. It is listed in the Jepson Manual 2nd Ed. (2102) as T. kingii ssp. dedeckerae.
Trifolium kingii as currently delimited occurs only in southern Utah and adjacent parts of Nevada and Colorado. It includes two subspecies: ssp. kingii occurs in southern Utah and southwestern Colorado, ssp. macilentum is in southern Nevada and southwestern Utah.
And just to make it a bit more fun, T. kingii ssp. macilentum was formerly considered a full species and is listed as such in Intermountain Flora, and it included the previously mentioned T. dedeckerae as T. macilentum var. dedeckerae.
