We currently conserve more than 57, acres of protected land across 11 states. Preserving nature is what brings us joy! We develop public nature areas, provide environmental education, and conserve tens of thousands of acres of land, waterways, and valuable habitat each year. In addition to developing public nature areas, we manage 8 public nature areas in Fayette County with plans to open more late Click here to learn more about our public natures areas.
A home base for conservation initiatives, nature area development, environmental education, agricultural education, and an environmental art program. This facility will encompass all that the Southern Conservation Trust does, and share it in a teachable way with the community we love. Click here for more information about the Fayette Environmental Education Center. The four-leaf variety being in short supply, he settled on the ubiquitous three-leaf clovers to explain the three-in-one nature of the Holy Trinity to the heathens.
One leaf stood for the Father, one for the Son and the third for the Holy Spirit, all united on the single stem of the Godhead. Similarly, a poem in the popular tradition holds that the four leaves on the lucky clover signify fame, wealth, health and faithful love. Along these lines, the English have a tradition that if you dream of clover, you're guaranteed a happy and prosperous marriage [source: Faust ].
West of England, in Cornwall, some people alleged that if pixies stole your child and left a changeling in its place, the only way to get your own offspring back was to lay a four-leaf clover on the impostor [source: Evans-Wentz ]. So we've established that four-leaf clovers have been considered powerfully lucky for a very long time, but why?
You know that saying about not seeing the forest for the trees? The same rule applies here. The experts say don't waste your time pawing through clumps of clover. Your best bet is to visually stake out an area the size of a typical office desk about a square meter or yard and quickly scan it. If anything out of the ordinary snags your attention, look at that spot more closely to see what it was.
If not, move on to your next square and scan again. Remember, your chances are one in 10,, so you've got to be efficient about this! Clover is a type of pea and is valued by farmers for a couple of reasons: Cows like to fill their faces with it; bees like to fill up on its nectar and the plant itself likes to fill its boots with nitrogen. That's to say, clover is very good at pulling nitrogen from the air and rooting it in the ground for other plants to eat.
There are species of clover, but the best one for the soil is known as white clover, or Trifolium repens [source: Faust ].
Trifolium repens also happens to be the kind of clover that produces the lucky four-leaf aberration. That fourth leaf, it turns out, is the result of a suppressed gene that fails to be suppressed.
Nobody's exactly sure what causes this to happen; but, for whatever reason, it rarely does. Very rarely [source: Olsen ]. As mentioned earlier, your chances of finding a four-leaf clover are a measly one in 10, It's that rarity that accounts for the luck associated with four-leaf clovers. In other words, you're lucky just to find one, so it stands to reason a certain kind of reason that more luck will follow. This is what scholars like to call, "magical thinking.
Magical thinking kicks in when we refuse to revise our conclusions despite all evidence to the contrary [source: Diaconis ]. Take the story of Sandra and her stolen bicycle. Both she and the officer who found it attribute the happy outcome to the four-leaf clover she gave him from her collection. But a skeptic might ask how someone toting a quiver of the lucky clovers would have the misfortune of being robbed of her bike in the first place.
Magical thinking skirts around awkward questions like this and sticks to the convenient details while ignoring the inconvenient ones. That said, in this case at least, magical thinking is a lot more fun than skepticism. In medieval times, a single woman who put one in her shoe would marry the first wealthy and eligible man she met.
The same charm pinned over her door would ensnare the first unmarried man to pass through. Strewn in the path of a rural bride, clover gave her protection and the promise of a successful marriage. It provided fodder and silage, enriched poor soil and banished snakes. Fields of clover were believed to attract fairies and wearing a four-leafed clover was said to render them visible.
An ointment made from a four-leafed clover or an amulet containing the lucky leaf, together with seven grains of wheat, gave second sight.
A rhyme declared one leaf for fame, one for wealth, one for a faithful love and one for glorious health. A maiden finding a two-leafed stem held the promise of a lover and a four-leafed helped a chap avoid military service, protected against madness, enhanced his psychic powers and promised wealth.
Two people chewing a four-leafed clover together were bound to fall in love and anyone finding a five-leafed one was assured of exceptional powers and great fortune. Some species found abroad generate large numbers of leaves on one stem. Those of us content to find only one lucky four-leaf clover may be nonplussed by another Guinness record, registered by year-old Katie Borka of Spotsylvania, Virginia, who found in the space of one hour; a likely US Powerball winner, perhaps. Our native white clover, Trifolium repens, and red clover, Trifolium pratense, widely planted in British fields and carried to other continents by colonisation, are but two in the global list of members of the Fabaceae or pea family.
Here, we may also see the so-called Swedish clover T. Few folk perceive them. Elsewhere in the world, other clover species have garnered a variety of colloquial and rather bewildering names, such as foothill, forest, subterranean, tomcat, cow, buffalo, bull, knotted, notchleaf, bearded, cup, clammy, fewflower, sulphur, whitetip, woollyhead and thimble.
English folk names included honeystalker or honeysuckle, from the old practice by rural children of sucking the flowers to taste the nectar produced within their 30 to 60 florets.
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