Everyone is getting ready for St Patricks Day, well mainly just the Irish and all those looking forward to wearing green and drinking a ton of beer for no reason other than, well it’s a good excuse for a party! However, everyone at Sir Holiday was hoping to figure out why exactly four-leaf clovers are linked to St Patricks Day, the Irish and most importantly, why they are so lucky. Therefore, without further ado let’s get right into the many reasons behind why four-leaf clovers are extraordinarily lucky, well at least according to the lucky Irish.

It seems that even the finding of a four-leaf clover in nature rather than on the internet or printed on a card, is an extremely tough endeavour. Why, well only 1 in every 10 000 of Trifolium repens – the scientific name for white clover – actually is a four-leafed clover, all the other 9 999 have three leaves. As the stories go, Saint Patrick made use of three-leafed clovers as an easy metaphor to teach people about the holy trinity. Whereas, he made use of the four-leafed clovers as a means to teach people about faith, hope, love and luck in an easily understandable way.

How do you check if your four-leafed clover is the real deal and not an imitation plant passed off as a legitimate piece of luck, well it’s time to grab your glasses and examine the leaf size? The leaves of a true four-leafed clover have three leaves that are exactly the same and have one leaf that is noticeably smaller than the other three. Other reasons of why four-leafed clovers are thought to be lucky, is that according to superstition and popular folk tales people who find these rare little plants have the ability to see faeries. Whether the gift of interaction with faeries is only for a short time or for a more permanent situation has remained unclear, however the fact of the matter is that you will be getting to meet the fae should you find this little piece of greenery on your morning walk.

For all those who think a shamrock and a four-leafed clover are the same thing, you are sadly mistaken, shamrocks refers to clovers that have three leaves. So what happens that makes the one in ten thousand clovers have four leaves instead of three, well according to the top science out there it’s most likely due to a genetic mutation. Why, well it seems that having four leaves is a recessive trait in white clovers, much in the same way as having attached ear lobes, the ability to roll your tongue or straight hair are all recessive traits within the human genome. Meaning that the four-leafed clovers all have to inherit the recessive gene for having four leaves from both of their parents, which is why finding one is probably such a miracle.

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Sea of green:

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Child hand;

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Dog with green hat

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