Finding a four-leaf clover
Where you find one four-leaf clover you often find another, because a clover patch can be a single plant spreading by runners. Finding one is a nudge to revisit the places that have been good to you.
What it may mean
Hunting for a four-leaf clover feels like pure chance, but the odds are not spread evenly across the lawn. White clover creeps along the ground on runners, so one patch is often a single plant, and a plant that grows an extra leaflet is likely to do it more than once. People who find one and keep looking close by are often rewarded with a second. The find says as much about where to look as about fortune. Good things gather where conditions suit them: the friend who always lifts you, the cafe where you write well, the time of day when your head is clear. It pays to return to those places on purpose. Melton's Astrologaster promised that a man who found four-leaved grass would soon find some good thing.
Depending on how you saw it
Spotting one without even looking
People who spot a four-leaf clover in passing have often trained their eyes on clover in childhood games. Practice can look like chance from the outside. Which skill of yours do others mistake for good fortune?
A clover with five leaflets or more
Clovers with five, six or even more leaflets turn up now and then, often on the same plants that make fours. Yet the four-leaf version is the one with all the stories. When has having more of something made it feel less special?
Finding one on a hard day
One found on a rough day feels almost addressed to you. Whatever its source, it changes the mood of the walk home. What small, good thing could you let count for more today than it usually would?
Why it happens in nature
Most white clover leaves have three leaflets. A fourth comes from a combination of genetics and growing conditions; one large survey counted roughly one four-leaf clover for every five thousand ordinary ones, and estimates elsewhere run as low as one in ten thousand. Clover spreads by creeping stems, so one patch can be a single plant that keeps producing extra leaflets.
What folk beliefs say
England
Melton's Astrologaster, quoted by Brand, says that if a man walking in the fields finds any four-leaved grass, he shall in a small while after find some good thing.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 250. View the page
France
In France, a woman who found two four-leaved clovers would twist them together with a bit of timothy grass and hook the stems under her belt, to be sure of the largest number of partners for the season.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, pp. 777-778. View the page
Tyrol (Austria and Italy)
In the Tyrol, a four-leafed clover laid secretly on a priest while he read the service from the mass book was said to keep him from continuing until the person who placed it pulled his robe.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 777. View the page
To reflect on
Which places or people have been reliably good to you, and when will you go back?