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prettygoodwordmelilot (MEL-uh-tot) - n., any of several Old World legumes (genus Melilotus), also known as sweet clover, with trifoil leaves and yellow flowers.
Grown for forage and as a nitrogen fixer. Both names come from having a lot of coumarin, the aromatic compound that gives fresh-cut hay its distinctive sweet aroma -- and which is readily converted by fungi into dicoumarol, an anticoagulant, thus making this a medicinal plant. The name was spelled mellilot in Middle English, and was borrowed in Old English from Latin melilōtos, from Greek melílōtos, the name of a clover that was probably this one, from méli, honey + lōtós, lotus.
---L.
Grown for forage and as a nitrogen fixer. Both names come from having a lot of coumarin, the aromatic compound that gives fresh-cut hay its distinctive sweet aroma -- and which is readily converted by fungi into dicoumarol, an anticoagulant, thus making this a medicinal plant. The name was spelled mellilot in Middle English, and was borrowed in Old English from Latin melilōtos, from Greek melílōtos, the name of a clover that was probably this one, from méli, honey + lōtós, lotus.
---L.
