What makes us believe that four leaf clovers bring good luck? Maybe it’s just because we think they’re rare. But how rare are these clovers really?
According to a frequently heard statistic, only one in 10,000 clovers has four leaves. This makes them about 500 times rarer among clovers. However, this is unfortunately not entirely true.
In 2017, a research team working for a website called Share the Luck analyzed 5.7 million clovers and discovered that the odds of finding a four-leaf clover were actually 1 in 5,000. Accordingly, we can assume that we have twice the chance of finding it than the traditionally accepted statistic of “one in 10,000 clovers”.
However, other factors come into play here. With some clover species and careful environmental planning, the chance of additional leaf growth can be greatly increased. According to John Frett Martha Stewart, director of the University of Delaware Botanical Gardens; This chance may increase depending on the type of alfalfa grown. Also, the combination of clover’s ability to spread with its underground stems can produce four times more four-leaf clovers than normal.
For example; In 2014, 21 four-leaf clovers appeared in Suzi Mekhitarian’s garden. If it had a typical turf area, the odds of such a thing happening would be next to impossible. As improbable as this may sound, Brett Summerell, Scientific Director of the Australian Botanical Garden, says he hears it every five or six months.
In general, having four leaves in clover is considered a recessive trait, and such traits are more difficult to transmit in plants than in animals. The gene for the four-leaf clover is the recessive gene. To explain this in a language we can understand; means that if the plant only carries the four-leaf gene on all four chromosomes, it will produce four leaves, which is rare.
In Mekhitarian’s case, however, something very unusual had happened. The dominant gene characteristics of the plant were four leaves instead of three. This increased the likelihood of such a situation occurring.
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