WEBVTT - Why Are Four-Leaf Clovers Considered Lucky? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.520 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:11.760 brain Stuff. Lauren Vogel bam here. One day in in Rochester, 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:14.480 New York, a woman named Sandra rode her bike into 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.120 town to do some shopping. She locked up her steed, shopped, 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.240 and came back to find it gone devastated. She reported 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:24.119 the loss to the cops, who warned her that the 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:27.960 chances of recovery were slim. Later that day, at a 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:31.400 coffee shop, she spotted another policeman and decided to tell 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.320 her sad tale again. Promising to have a look. The 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:36.760 cop hopped on his bike and went off on patrol, 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:39.600 but not before Sandra had given him a four leaf 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.760 clover to boost his chances. Within minutes, the officer had 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.280 found her wheels. Never he reported, had he ever recovered 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.400 a missing item so quickly. The clover had apparently done 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:54.440 its work. Nearly as interesting as the happy outcome of 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:57.400 this story is the fact that Sandra had a spare 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.840 four leaf clover on hand. It was no accident she 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:03.600 collected them. In fact, she had so many that she 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:06.839 made a habit of giving them away. In this she's 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.760 not as unusual as you might think. The Guinness World 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.559 record for the largest collection of four leaf clovers goes 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:15.440 to one Edward Martin of Cooper Landing, Alaska, who has 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:18.520 amassed more than a hundred thousand of them. And that's 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.280 truly astounding when you consider the fact that your chances 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:23.959 of finding a four leaf clover are only one in 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:28.440 ten thousand. So four leaf clovers are supposed to bring 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.399 good luck, and clearly some people really want to pile 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:33.720 it on. But just what is it that makes them 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.920 so lucky? The legend goes all the way back to 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.720 Adam and Eve. One tale tells that as they were 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.200 being hustled out of the garden of Eden, Eve plucked 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.000 a four leaf clover to carry with her as a 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:48.240 souvenir of paradise. The druids of the ancient Celtic world 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:50.919 were also big fans of four leaf clovers and carried 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:55.080 them around to ward off malevolent spirits. This practice evolved 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.559 into a medieval theory that a four leaf clover would 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.240 give you the ability to spot fairies and take vase 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.000 of action if necessary. As a result, back in the 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:06.400 Middle Ages, kids entertained themselves by ferreting out the necessary 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.760 stems and heading out on fairy hunts. With the little 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.000 green plants enjoying such popularity, it's no wonder that Saint 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:16.520 Patrick decided to use them as a teaching tool when 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.079 he set about converting Ireland to Christianity. The four leaf 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.239 variety being in short supply, he settled on the ubiquitous 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:25.959 three leaf clovers to explain the three and one nature 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.840 of the Holy Trinity. One leaf stood for the Father, 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.360 one for the Son, and the third for the Holy Spirit, 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:36.000 all united on the single stem of the Godhead. Similarly, 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.679 a poem in the popular tradition holds that the four 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:42.240 leaves on the lucky clover signify fame, wealth, health, and 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.720 faithful love. Along these lines, there's an English belief that 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.200 if you dream of clover, you're guaranteed a happy and 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:52.440 prosperous marriage. West of England, in Cornwall, some people alleged 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:55.080 that if pixies stole your child and left a changeling 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.239 in its place, the only way to get your own 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:00.120 offspring back was to lay a four leaf clover on 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.960 the impostor So, we've established that four leaf clovers have 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:09.760 been considered powerfully lucky for a long time. But why 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.400 clover is a type of pa and It's valued by 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.040 farmers for a couple of reasons. Cows love to eat it, 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:18.560 bees like to fill up on its nectar, and the 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.119 plant itself likes to fill its boots with nitrogen. That's 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.760 to say, clover is very good at pulling nitrogen from 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.360 the air and rooting it in the ground for itself 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:31.200 and other plants to eat. There are over three species 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:33.160 of clover, but the best one for the soil is 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:38.440 known as white clover or Trifolium repens. Trifolium repens also 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:40.680 happens to be the kind of clover that produces the 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:44.760 lucky four leaf aberration. That fourth leaf, as it turns out, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:47.720 is the result of a suppressed gene that sometimes fails 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.840 to be suppressed. Like many plants, white clover normally grows 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:54.880 leaves in groups of three because for reasons no one 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.640 is entirely sure of Lots of plants, from sunflowers to pineapples, 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.440 grows segments and number is in the Fibonacci sequence, you know, 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:07.840 it goes up one, one, two, three, five, eighty one, 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.880 et cetera, with each new number being the sum of 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.800 the two previous numbers. It's also what the golden spiral 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:19.040 is constructed from so the genetic anomaly that creates four 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:22.880 leaf clovers only happens in one in ten thousand clovers. 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.000 It's that rarity that accounts for the luck associated with 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:28.560 four leaf clovers. In other words, you're lucky just to 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.080 find one, So it stands to reason, a certain kind 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.880 of reason, that more luck will follow in that spirit, 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:38.080 here's a bit of clover trivia. In two thousand nine, 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:40.880 after studying ways to cross breed this lucky plant, a 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.320 farmer in Japan grew a clover with fifty six leaves 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.640 on it, again off from the Fibonacci sequences norm of 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:51.880 fifty five by one. Logically, that makes it fourteen times 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:56.640 luckier than a mere four leaf clover. Or or, rather illogically, 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.960 this is what scholars like to call magical think. Because 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.680 of the way our brains operate, we're constantly looking for 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:06.400 connections in order to explain the happenstance of the world 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.279 around us. Magical thinking kicks in when we refuse to 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.360 revise our conclusions despite all the evidence to the contrary. 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.760 Take the story of Sandra and her stole and bicycle. 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:18.760 Both she and the officer who found it attribute the 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.200 happy outcome to the four leaf clover she gave him 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.760 from her collection. But a skeptic might ask how someone 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:27.320 toting a quiver of the lucky clover's would have had 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:29.320 the misfortune of being robbed of her bike in the 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:33.840 first place. Magical thinking skirts around awkward questions like this 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:38.080 and sticks to the convenient details while ignoring the inconvenient ones. 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.479 That said, in this case, at least, magical thinking is 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:49.359 a lot more fun than skepticism. Today's episode was written 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.160 by Ocean Kuran and produced by Tyler Klang. For more 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:54.039 on this and lots of other magical topics is at 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.599 how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.080 iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio as 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:01.800 the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:02.719 to your favorite shows.