How to Find a Four-Leaf Clover

August 22, 2017 5:58 PM

When I was in the third grade, we had a scavenger hunt at school.
posted by clawsoon (43 comments total)

🍀
posted by Fizz at 6:07 PM on August 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

This could have been written by my daughter who had collected and pressed 2000 4-leaf clovers before she finished middle school.
posted by straight at 6:23 PM on August 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

That is a lovely essay. Thank you for sharing it. It reminds me of this passage:

He noted, what repeatedly befell him, that, after receiving from a distance a rare plant, he would presently find the same in his own haunts. And those pieces of luck which happen only to good players happened to him. One day, walking with a stranger, who inquired where Indian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, "Everywhere," and, stooping forward, picked one on the instant from the ground.

From "Thoreau," by Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Atlantic (1862)
posted by Caxton1476 at 6:30 PM on August 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

Two hours ago I picked a four leaf clover from the ground at a nearby park after casually looking for them for the last three years. Finally!
posted by annathea at 6:50 PM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I seriously thought four leaf clovers were essentially a myth.

Also, it's weird to see "third grade" in a Canadian publication.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:55 PM on August 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I used to find four leaf clovers all the time, but I don't think I've looked since grade school. It became almost blasé to find a "regular" four leaf variant, so I usually searched for the higher leaf counts, I think I found a seven leafed one once.
posted by borkencode at 6:58 PM on August 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think they are much more common in some locations in the world than others. When I was a kid, I found them all the time. After we moved, I couldn't find them at all.
posted by Xoc at 7:01 PM on August 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

And curiosity has led me to discover the most leaves on a clover ever found is 56.
posted by borkencode at 7:01 PM on August 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

I used to be very good at finding 4 leaf clovers. In high school I gave my girlfriend a gift of 100 clovers pressed in paper.

I always concentrate on the stem in the center of the leaves. It's easier to see 4 branches from the center than it is to see a cluster of 4 leaves.
posted by device55 at 7:21 PM on August 22, 2017

I have never found a four-leaf clover, and was there an actual technique shared in the article aside from "1. Find a four-leaf clover"? But as long as we're talking about clover:

For a project which has since stalled, I ended up looked at a lot of summer camp photos. And let me tell, you, there are some camps which are scary, and some which look fine...and I found one camp that was clearly The Best Camp:

* Actual professionally-taken photos of the kids and grounds, nicely framed and lit, even the action ones? Check.
* On a lake in a mini-resort style, nestled in some woods? Check.
* Buildings all quite nice condition, and actually charming? Check.
* Happy looking kids? Check.
* Happy looking staff? Check.
* No Mandatory jeebus, and especially no"rock and roll" jeebus shows? Check.
* Nice equipment, nice camp shirts, good food? Check.
* Big variety of things for the kids to do? Check.

(Had I ever been sent to camp (not a thing in our house, that's what "outside" was for), this is exactly the one my parents would have laughed and laughed at the idea of before sending me to the highway median with a reflective vest, being more their style. I expect the fee for two weeks is more than my mortgage for a month, and they probably don't want a 50-year-old kid, anyway.)

BUT the best part, and I say this as someone with the athleticism of a slug, were their glorious play fields for soccer and the like. All of them clover lawns, not a blade of grass in sight. I have never seen such a welcoming-looking expanse of manicured greenery.

My activity card would have one item on it: "Sprawl on soccer field. Admire bumble bees who will share it, try not to get stepped on by serious-looking kids wearing cleats. Inhale the wonderful scent (of clover, not cleats). Move ten feet. Repeat."

Still probably would be unable to find a four-leaf clover, though.

Sigh.
posted by maxwelton at 7:22 PM on August 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

I would like to go to this camp.
Or failing that, send my child.

(But really, me)
posted by madajb at 7:31 PM on August 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

My sweet, optimistic grandfather was one of these people who could just see four-leaf clovers, like the author of this piece. He could reach down wherever he was standing and just pluck one out of the ground. It was a bit magical and eerie when I was a kid. When I was 10 & learning sleight-of-hand tricks from joke shop kits & the like, I thought: aha!—he must just keep one or two four-leaf clovers tucked away & produce them on command, which might have been his style—his pockets were always filled with golf balls & mysterious political pins & other oddments he picked up on the side of the road—but no, he really could just see them easily, in whatever patch of green he was standing in. He let me tug them out of the dirt myself.

But: As lovely as this piece is, I object to its just-relax-and-fully-experience-it, drag-your-toes-across-it framing like this:

Appreciate the ones that have only three leaves. Admire their symmetry. Common things are beautiful, too.

The implication is that I’m not relaxed enough, that I’m not living in the moment, that I’m trying too hard. Which rankles, sure, but also doesn’t feel true. I’m pretty good at seeing patterns of letters (anagrams, etc.) but I’ve always been absolute shit with blobs of color. The author mentions those 80s/90s “magic eye” illusions—I could never, ever see the 3D image in those and for a while believed they were some Barnumesque scam that no one could actually understand but willingly pretended to. (Like Marmaduke, which I think they appeared next to in USA Today.) The explanation was always, “just relax more,” and the image of a pterodactyl or the Statue of Liberty or whatever would pop out—never worked for me, despite different focal lengths, glasses, a full panel of recreational drugs, crossing my eyes, nothing. Those posters stayed horrible streaky blurs.

Refraining from trying to find particular clovers—and from trying to relax so hard—has been a good move for me.
posted by miles per flower at 7:47 PM on August 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

I have never found a four-leaf clover, despite looking over many 10,000s of clovers. Is smog blocking the mutation? Is someone else getting to them before me?
posted by Phssthpok at 8:00 PM on August 22, 2017

As a kid I always thought the reason I could find so many 4-leaf clovers in the yard was due to some freak clover mutation in the area due to toxic waste or something.
posted by CarolynG at 8:11 PM on August 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Parrott's lab... has bred some special clover that contained almost all four-leaf varieties. He focus-tested the clover, expecting people to be ecstatic. To his surprise, the feedback was overwhelmingly negative: "We had taken the entire mystery and excitement out of it."

posted by clawsoon at 8:20 PM on August 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

Also, it's weird to see "third grade" in a Canadian publication.

How so? In the part of Canada I did third grade in I think we called it "grade 3" instead, but that seems pretty much the same. It was around that time when I last found a four-leaf clover, but strange coincidence: It was two days ago I last looked for one. I think maybe just the thought of trying to find one brought me good luck, because I quickly realized that just a few steps away from the patch of clover I was in, there was a patch of blueberries that was a lot more interesting.
posted by sfenders at 8:30 PM on August 22, 2017

I've got a mutant patch of clover in my front yard; something like 10% are of the four leaf variety.
posted by Mitheral at 9:01 PM on August 22, 2017

Myth? Not at all. Back when I lived in a part of the country that had clovers, I'd find them a few times a year with fairly quick glances at the ground. They stick out like a sore thumb to me in a field of them if I look at a patch for a second or two. The difference in the angle that the leaves come together in the center is what catches my attention. Sometimes, with the correct lighting, the four leaf variety have obviously different shadows on their leaves than all the others, but that's a bit of a crap shoot since it requires fairly specific conditions.
posted by wierdo at 10:04 PM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I could never, ever see the 3D image in those and for a while believed they were some Barnumesque scam that no one could actually understand but willingly pretended to...The explanation was always, “just relax more,”

You don't actually relax to see the images, you cross your eyes to see everything double, creating as much space as possible between the doubles... then play with the space by gradually uncrossing your eyes until the doubled images line up.

I don't know if that's any more helpful that "just relax," but there you go.
posted by subdee at 10:10 PM on August 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Maybe it isn't that 4 leaf clovers bring good luck, but that luck brings 4 leaf clovers. Like the holy grail, only the pure of heart can find them.
posted by Literaryhero at 10:11 PM on August 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

I used to be able to find them like this, but there's not a lot of clovers around these days for me to find, much less the ones with extra leaves.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:45 PM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

There were some spots in my hometown near a military base that grew eight inch tall clovers with four, six, and sometimes up to nine leaves. I think there was uranium in the soil :/
posted by ananci at 10:47 PM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

you cross your eyes to see everything double

That way will let you see the image, but the depth part will be reversed. By that I mean, the foreground will appear closer than the background. Your right eye will be looking at what your left eye is supposed to be seeing, and vice versa.

The right way is to look into the distance, behind the picture. Then, cross your eyes inward until the pattern lines up. Finally, get it in focus (this is the part that requires relaxation).

Here is a magic eye picture. Spoiler alert: it's a shark. The cross-eyes method makes it look like a shark-shaped crater. The looking-into-the-distance method makes it look like a shark in front of a flat background.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 11:58 PM on August 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

A sound track for this post, I think.

As somebody who has never seen one, I find the abilities of those who find them often a little awe inspiring. There is, for sure, the trick of being sufficiently dedicated to be able to spend the time required - but there is also the ability to actually see the anomaly. This guy thinks his ability to pick them out is sue to his synaesthesia.

So the lucky plants are somehow found by the lucky people.
posted by rongorongo at 1:02 AM on August 23, 2017

Apparently, one in 10,000 clovers has four leaves.

Less now with y'all picking them! Maybe they're so rare because they've been literally weeded out of the population. I always thought the luck was in the finding, rather than the having.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:33 AM on August 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

This is another reminder that I need to get back to being me. I used to have this skill, among others, and I have lost it, along with other skills. For me, it's definitely an issue of being unaware, unable to relax and be present, and I can understand why people would extrapolate from themselves and think that is what everyones problem is. But I know people who just aren't visual, and others who just aren't musical, and others who just don't get literature. I think we have different sets of skills, and that what we experience when we are aware corresponds to what we are able to experience.
posted by mumimor at 5:23 AM on August 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

That synaesthesia link is interesting. I never connected my synaesthesia to my ability to find four-leaf clovers but it makes sense. It's definitely less about searching for them and just immediately seeing what's different.

I was out in a park with someone, sitting the grass and for some reason, we were talking about unicorns. In the middle of the conversation, my eyes fell on a four-leaf clover. I paused, leaned over and picked it and handed it to my companion. In the middle of a conversation about unicorns. It was the best accidental magic trick I've ever done.

(I haven't found one recently but I really haven't looked, even casually. I think I've found enough for my lifetime, though.)
posted by darksong at 6:00 AM on August 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

If I only had a penguin...: Also, it's weird to see "third grade" in a Canadian publication.

I thought the same... turns out she was born and raised in Oregon.
posted by Laura in Canada at 6:16 AM on August 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Here is a magic eye picture. Spoiler alert: it's a shark.

Arrrgh. Still can't decipher it, cross eyed first, cross eyed second, look through it, look sideways, doesn't matter, it's the same stubborn blobby multicolored image it's always been.

(Someone should make one of these images that reveals a giant four leaf clover. )
posted by notyou at 6:39 AM on August 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Maybe it's a personal bias or a regional usage, but all I could see in the article was the extra s on the end of clover. Plural of clover is clover.
posted by scruss at 6:49 AM on August 23, 2017

I too cannot see the magic eye things, which a doctor used to diagnose me with partial blindness in one eye due to retinal pigment problems. It also explained the horrible migranes I got as a teenageer, which was when my eye was declining rapidly, and my other eye straining to keep up.

However, I am great at finding four-leaf clover, just the other day I gave a book to my freind for his child and a clover fell out while he was flipping thru it. I too trace it to looking for patterns, something my father taught me when we were hunting sharks teeth on the Carolina Coast. If you can find the right exception to the noise, you can always find the pattern. With the sharks teeth it was the velvety dark triangle, with the clover, it was the light green centers. I suppose this weird skill of mine is good for something, but I just enjoy adding it to my stack of time and place specific party tricks, which I only really use at the beach, or at backyard cookouts to impress little kids and their parents who still enjoy a bit of real world magic now and then.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:56 AM on August 23, 2017

That way will let you see the image, but the depth part will be reversed. By that I mean, the foreground will appear closer than the background. Your right eye will be looking at what your left eye is supposed to be seeing, and vice versa.

Whoah, I've always been able to see those pictures, but I was using this method and thought that they were supposed to look like that (concave images instead of convex). I'd heard the "look beyond" explanation but never realised you'd see different things.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:26 AM on August 23, 2017

When I was a kid, there was a place in our lawn where the clover commonly had four or five leaves. We picked them by the dozens.

I was in Seattle, on the road with the rock band I was the roadie for, walking with a local girl in a park. I said, "Let's find a four-leaf clover." I bent down and picked one immediately.
posted by Repack Rider at 8:07 AM on August 23, 2017

Huh. It totally works, the shark does pop forward out of the background...

You can still tell where to stop crossing your eyes, by seeing where the pattern on top of the image lines up, but it was harder for me to bring the image into focus this way. I also thought the image was supposed to be convex!
posted by subdee at 8:09 AM on August 23, 2017

"Take the Cl out of clover and it's over; leave the Cl in clover and risk increasing oxidation," as my Dad used to say.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:18 AM on August 23, 2017

The thing is, I have always been able to find shiny Bulbasaurs, for as long as I can remember. I just see them.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:39 AM on August 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I come from Eastern Europe - I remember picking them up by a handful about a year after Chernobyl blew up. I might be faultily associating the two though...
posted by Dotty at 9:53 AM on August 23, 2017

Back in my student days, we had a flower pot on the porch, filled with with crusty old soil, that we used for cigarette butts. After a bit of rain, it was eerily filled with four-leaf clovers! We were all a bit spooked, but I guess it was a powerful motivator to quit smoking.
posted by stillmoving at 10:04 AM on August 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

That was a nice read. I especially liked this part:

I think it’s lucky simply to have seen, to know what it is to seek out and love a genetically deformed clover—to know how to treasure difference.

The fact that something can be called genetically deformed and also treasured, even sought out, is wonderful and not expressed often enough. Genetically deformed doesn't have to default to bad. I notice that she also wrote a memoir about living with cancer and I wonder if there is a connection between the two.

Someone should make one of these images that reveals a giant four leaf clover.

Okie
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 10:06 AM on August 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

It’s the same with four-leaf clovers. If you try too hard, you will only ever see the patch. Instead, slip into a lazy, soft-focus, summer state of mind.

This is how to see shooting stars, too.
posted by BrashTech at 10:23 AM on August 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I haven't thought about this in years. I don't think I've seen (or looked for) four-leaf clovers since I was a kid.
I'd say there were plenty in our yard. We found them all the time.
One time my sister was riding her bike on the sidewalk and fell over. We were expecting her to cry but she said "hey, I found a four-leaf clover."
I wonder if there's something to the mutation idea. Maybe they're there more on lawns that have been 'treated'.
I think I'll go out tomorrow on my untreated 'lawn' and see if I find any.
posted by MtDewd at 5:17 PM on August 23, 2017

I'm one of those that can see them. For me it is also the angles. I can easily count the number of slices in a pie that is evenly cut up in up to 12 pieces. It's actually not counting in the 1,2,3,4 sense but that is thirds divided in half is six pieces or six plus odd is seven.

As for the distribution of four leaf clovers, I've noticed some areas have more than others, but the most likely place is the down hill spot near a drain. Maybe that is because that is where the fertilizer gets concentrated.
posted by Monday at 6:04 PM on August 23, 2017

Clinging to the Wreckage, thank you. This is one of the very few of these things where I've ever been able to actually see the hidden image, and the three dimensional effect is a-MAZ-ing.
posted by lhauser at 8:03 PM on August 23, 2017 [1 favorite]