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My SO found a 5 leaf clover this week (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 7 months ago (15 children)

Are those rare? Some say finding a 4 leaf clover means luck, but AFAIK 4 leaf clover is the most common.

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  • [–] 25 points 7 months ago* (6 children)

    Clovers usually only have 3 leaves. The probability of clover naturally having 4 leaves is 1 in 5000. But it's also a genetic thing, so they can be bred to have more leaves. The world record for most leaves on a clover was achieved through cross/selective breeding.

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  • [+] 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)
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  • [–] [S] 13 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Wikipedia puts them at 1/29390 and 4 leafs at 1/5000. An extra leaf is the result of a genetic mutation of the plant. I'm assuming here, but I think it's the same mutation that happened twice.

    Hopefully someone actual plant knowledge will stop by to enlighten us!

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Thanks, I looked it up, and regarding the 4 leaf clover it checks out. I just remember as a child I seemed to find mostly 4 leaf, but it was probably just childish imagination, 1 leaf kind of has 2 parts, so I probably in my childish imagination thought I found 4 leaf clovers all over the place.
    The curse of having memories from before I was 4 years old.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I've seen cloverpatches in the wild with a variety that produces almost exclusively 4 leaved ones. They look a little different than your average clovers but you might have seen those! Either way childhood memories are fickle.

    In my childhood we'd hunt 4 leaf clovers for days, only found a handful of them and never seen one with 5 leafs!

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    When I was in high school our math teacher took us out to the corner of the school property to count cars for a real life statistics lesson. The lawn was covered in clover and she offered extra credit to anyone who found a four-leaf clover. That’s the day she discovered four-leaf clovers aren’t that uncommon.

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