Trifolium repens also happens to be the kind of clover that produces the lucky four-leaf aberration. There are 300 species of clover, but the best one for the soil is known as white clover, or Trifolium repens. That's to say, clover is very good at pulling nitrogen from the air and rooting it in the ground for other plants to eat. So we've established that four-leaf clovers have been considered powerfully lucky for a very long time, but why?Ĭlover is a type of pea and is valued by farmers for a couple of reasons: Cows like to fill their faces with it bees like to fill up on its nectar and the plant itself likes to fill its boots with nitrogen. West of England, in Cornwall, some people alleged that if pixies stole your child and left a changeling in its place, the only way to get your own offspring back was to lay a four-leaf clover on the impostor. Along these lines, the English have a tradition that if you dream of clover, you're guaranteed a happy and prosperous marriage. Similarly, a poem in the popular tradition holds that the four leaves on the lucky clover signify fame, wealth, health and faithful love. One leaf stood for the Father, one for the Son and the third for the Holy Spirit, all united on the single stem of the Godhead. The four-leaf variety being in short supply, he settled on the ubiquitous three-leaf clovers to explain the three-in-one nature of the Holy Trinity to the heathens. Patrick decided to use them as a teaching tool when he set about converting Ireland to Christianity. Two four-leaf clovers were collected and pressed.With the little green plants enjoying such popularity, it's no wonder St. Collected by Jack Kenney (#54) on Apin Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. This is a close up of an image of a Trifolium repens sheet from the NLU collection.
It is possible there are more, but depending on how the original collection was pressed, some sheets were difficult to determine with a large patch and overlapping leaves. Of the 556 total sheets of Trifolium repens from the BRIT/SMU, VDB, and NLU collections spanning over 150 years and almost every continent, only 6 lucky clovers were discovered! So, only 1.08% of the Trifolium repens sheets in the entirety of the BRIT Philecology Herbarium contains a four-leaf clover. Several BRIT staff members and volunteers have discovered a few lucky clovers from this population over the years. The herbarium staff decided it would be interesting to conduct our own internal survey by looking in the collections to see if any botanists had either purposefully or accidentally collected four-leaf clovers on sheets of Trifolium repens. When BRIT moved into its current building in 2011, a population of Trifolium repens was planted on the southwest side of the building near the path and geology wall. There is even a Guinness World Record for the largest number of leaflets on Trifolium repens. A man in China has been record-holder with his discovery of a plant with 56 leaflets! Some of these plants across the world not only grow one extra leaflet, but sometimes up to 8 leaflets. They found the frequency to really be 1 in 5,076! This is not the only surprise this species brings to the table. However, it was not until 2017 that a study was conducted by enthusiasts in Europe to see if this number was accurate. Although Trifolium is derived from the Latin words tres (three) and folium (leaf), a unique genetic mutation causes some plants to grow an additional leaflet! A simple Google search will tell you the likelihood of a four-leaf clover is 1 in 10,000. The true lucky clover is believed to be the white clover of the legume family – Trifolium repens. There are many plant species bearing the iconic clover look in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. BRIT Collections, Labs & Library Exhibitions.Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas Online.JBRIT Back Issues, Archives, Index, and Reprints.Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.The Stansbery Collection for Botanical Art.The Arader Natural History Collection of Art.Growth of the BRIT Herbarium Collections.Fern and Lycophyte Taxonomy and Evolution.