My Four-Leaf Clover (And How to Find Your Own!)

This is the largest four-leaf clover I've ever found. I keep it pressed in my copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. It's very common to keep them pressed in Bibles.

The placement in (the second) fourth chapter was by chance, believe it or not.

Now, my dad taught me that four-leaf clovers are only lucky if you find them by chance. This is a very common belief. Thankfully, I found this one when I was getting out of my car and had this behemoth just staring me in the face.

Others feel that a four-leaf clover is always lucky, so if you wish to go hunting for a lucky charm of your own, here are some tips:

-Make sure you're actually hunting around in clover. Look-alike species include wood sorrel and oxalis.

-Look in patches of white clover (that's what mine is). It's the species most likely to produce extra leaves. White clovers have white flowers. The leaves of white clover can be oval or heart-shaped and they have a single faint, jagged, horizontal band of pale green.

-Once you find your four-leaf clover, keep looking. There's usually a few mutations in the same patch. Mark the location and return to it every so often.

-You can also dig up the four-leaf clovers you find with a few of the clovers around them and replant them together in a cluster. The closer they are together, the more likely the mutation is to be passed on and spread. (I can't guarantee the luck of farmed four-leaf clovers.)

You might think if four leaves are lucky, 5 or 6 leaves must be extra lucky. I mean right? Wrong. If you find a clover with extra leaves, you're supposed to pluck off the extra leaves, possibly even leaving them at a crossroads or casting them into a moving body of water. Then again Fry's seven-leaf clover was extremely lucky...

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most leaves ever found on a single clover was 56.