Four-leaf clover
A clover leaf with four leaflets instead of the usual three, kept for luck in Irish, British and wider European folklore. It is an uncommon form of the plant, and a different thing from the shamrock, which has three leaves.
Meaning
In Irish folklore a four-leaved clover, often called a four-leaved shamrock, is lucky, above all with money. Children writing down their neighbours’ beliefs for the Schools’ Collection of 1937–39, now in the National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin, recorded in Co. Clare that nearly everybody searches for one at some time, and in Co. Leitrim that one cut with a sixpence and kept in a purse means you will never want for money. English and continental folklore gave it other powers. T. F. Thiselton-Dyer’s The Folk-lore of Plants (1889) calls it a magic talisman that lets its wearer find the fairies, and records it in love charms. Where and when the belief began is not recorded in these collections. The fourth leaflet has a genetic cause: Wayne Parrott’s team at the University of Georgia found the gene for it in white clover in 2010.
Origin and history
Thiselton-Dyer’s survey gathers the English and European lore of the nineteenth century. The four-leaved clover, he writes, was said to grow only where the fairies lived, and he quotes Samuel Lover’s lines: “I’ll seek a four-leaved clover / In all the fairy dells, / And if I find the charmed leaf, / Oh, how I’ll weave my spells!” In love charms it paired with the even ash, in a saying he calls current throughout the country: “If you find an even ash or a four-leaved clover, / Rest assured you’ll see your true love ere the day is over.” On the Continent, he adds, many a lover put a four-leaved clover under his pillow to dream of his sweetheart. Another couplet made it a pass to royalty: “With a four-leaved clover, a double-leaved ash, and a green-topped leave, / You may go before the queen’s daughter without asking leave.” Luck ran out past four: the finder of a five-leaved clover, it was said, would have bad luck.
The Irish schoolchildren’s notes, half a century later, add rules for finding and keeping one. The Clare account says it is usually found in bog haggards and should be cut or plucked with a black-handled knife, and that it brings every kind of good luck, especially in money matters. The Leitrim one says that finding one while milking a cow is lucky, that you find one when you are not expecting it, and that one grows wherever a horse foals, so people mark the place to look there the next year.
The shamrock has three leaves
The four-leaf clover is often confused with the shamrock, the emblem of Ireland, but the shamrock has three leaflets and a meaning of its own. University of Missouri Extension explains that the word comes from semróg, “little clover”, that a shamrock is a clover with three leaflets, and that the original shamrock is thought to have been either yellow clover (Trifolium dubium) or white clover (Trifolium repens). Thiselton-Dyer records the shamrock worn in Ireland on St Patrick’s Day and the tradition behind it: that Patrick, preaching the doctrine of the Trinity, used the trefoil as a symbol of the mystery. He also notes that several plants have been named as the true shamrock, with Dutch clover worn in his day and Medicago lupulina also sold as shamrock in Dublin. The pot plants sold as shamrocks for St Patrick’s Day are often a different plant again, a wood sorrel (Oxalis) from South and Central America, MU Extension notes. The Leitrim schoolchild’s notes keep a legend of the plant itself: no shamrocks were ever seen in Ireland until St Patrick stooped down and picked one.
How rare four-leaf clovers are
No one has a settled figure. Kathi Mecham, a University of Missouri Extension horticulturist, puts the chance of finding one at about 1 in 10,000. UGA Today, the University of Georgia’s news service, gave in 2022 an estimate from the website Share the Luck of one four-leaf clover for every 5,076 three-leaf ones, and said scientists are not sure why they are rare. The plant makes counting hard. Wayne Parrott, whose team mapped the gene for the four-leaf trait in white clover in 2010, found that the trait does not always show even when the gene is present: “If daylight or temperatures aren’t right, you won’t see it.” When conditions are right, he said, he can find plenty of seven- and eight-leaf clovers.
See also
Lucky cat (maneki-neko), Italian horn (cornicello), Evil eye (nazar), Dreamcatcher.
Sources
- The Folk-lore of Plants (Thiselton-Dyer, 1889), T. F. Thiselton-Dyer, 1889 (Project Gutenberg eBook #10118), Project Gutenberg, chapters VII, VIII, IX, XII, XX
- A Four-Leaved Shamrock, Kilmore, Co. Leitrim (The Schools' Collection, 1937–39), The Schools' Collection, Volume 0204, page 304, Kilmore school, Co. Leitrim; collected by Tessie Mc Loughlin from F. Mc Loughlin, Killadiskert; National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, dúchas.ie (National Folklore Collection, UCD), transcript
- The Four-Leaved Shamrock, Rinneen, Co. Clare (The Schools' Collection, 1937–39), The Schools' Collection, Volume 0621, page 228, An Rinnín, Leacht Uí Chonchobhair school (Rinneen, Co. Clare); National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, dúchas.ie (National Folklore Collection, UCD), transcript
- St. Patrick's Day: Time to rock your shamrock knowledge, Linda Geist, 27 February 2025, University of Missouri Extension, news release (Internet Archive copy of 20 April 2026; the site refuses the fetcher)
- The science and secrets of four-leaf clovers, Aaron Hale, 11 March 2022, UGA Today, University of Georgia, article
- Lucky find, Stephanie Schupska, 30 August 2010, UGA Today, University of Georgia, article
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research