Luck & Chance

You’ve Found One!

A medieval English politician and author, Sir John Melton, wrote in 1620, that “If a man walking in the fields finds any four-leaved grass, he shall in a small while after find some good thing.” One root of that belief, well established long before Melton’s remark, is explained by the fact that a four-leaf clover is found once in every 10,000 common three-leaved clovers. Four-leaf clovers were considered a lucky charm repelling bad spirits by Druids, the pre-Christian Celtic priests occupying Ireland and much of Western Europe. According to some legends, each of the leaves has a meaning: the first stands for faith, the second for hope, the third for love, and the last one for luck. Another fable states, to children’s delight, that finding a four-leaf clover allows one to see fairies and plant sprites (ghosts or elf-like beings). Finally, a legend has it that during Adam’s and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden, Eve took the four-leaved plant to remind her of life in Paradise.

The appearance of the fourth leaf in a normally three-leaved plant is believed to have a genetic origin. One possibility is that a low frequency receding gene expresses itself in only those plants whose both parents possess that gene (thereby further decreasing the likelihood of that occurring). Another possibility is a mutation induced by environmental stress (e.g. ultraviolet radiation or chemical exposure). In fact, in 2010 researchers from the University of Georgia reported having identified a gene causing the plant to grow four leaves. This suggests that, by skillful breeding or use of environmental factors, it is possible to produce a line of clovers possessing the required four-leaf genes. A British naturalist, Richard Mabey, states in his book Flora Britannica that there are farms in the US which have succeeded in coaxing the plant to “four-leafness “ on an industrial scale. In view of this, the reports of collectors amassing hundreds of thousands of four-leaf clovers are perhaps plausible. The Guinness World Record for the largest collection of four-leaf clovers belongs to Edward Martin Sr., from Alaska, USA, who owned 111,060 of them as of May, 2007.

Now that’s a lot of luck!

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References

• ”What is a Four Leaf Clover” an Article on WiseGeek.com (retrieval date : 1336867200)
• David Beaulieu, “Four Leaf Clovers - the ‘Good Luck’ Plants”, an Article on About.com
• ”The Meaning Behind Common Superstitions: Four-Leaf Clovers”, an Article on GloMsn.com (retrieval date : 1336867200)
• Steven D. Levitt, “160,000 Four-Leaf Clovers?”, an Article on Freakonomics.com (source date : 1206403200) (retrieval date : 1336867200)
• ”25 Four Leaf Clovers Facts You May Not Know”, an Article on Yahoo Voices (source date : 1277251200) (retrieval date : 1336867200)
• Wikipedia’s Article on Four Leaf Clovers (retrieval date : 1336867200)