A wee bit about shamrocks
Photo by tamaki
In honor of St. Patrick's Day and my Science Matters colleague Dennis O'Brien - the most Irish fellow I know - I've put together a sampling of shamrock trivia.
The plants called "shamrocks" are typically of two species: Trifolium dubium, or lesser trefoil, and trifolium repens, or white clover (pictured above). In a 1998 survey found that Irish people most often identify lesser trefoil, a member of the pea family, as shamrocks. White clover, however, is often found in American yards.
It's unclear how rare four-leaf clovers are. A clover farmer interviewed in 2005 estimated that 1 in 10,000 shamrocks have four leaves, while lower estimates put the ratio closer to 1 in 100.
Edward Martin Sr., of Cooper Landing, Alaska, holds the record for collecting the most four-leaf clovers. Since he began gathering them as a child growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y, he's found 160,000.
He usurped the previous record holder George Kaminski, an inmate in a Pennsylvania prison who took the title in 1995 after finding 72,927 four-leaf clovers in prison yards.
