Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!aplcen!arrom
From: arrom@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Biology of Four Leaf Clover ??
Message-ID: <1872@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Date: 7 Jul 89 03:01:40 GMT
References: <2324@aecom.yu.edu>
Reply-To: arrom@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee (600.429))
Distribution: na
Organization: Johns Hopkins University
Lines: 26

>	Today I found a 4 leaf clover while walking off a softball field.
>While this is the fifth four leaf clover I have ever seen in my lifetime,
>this is the first one that I have ever found on my own (as opposed to
>someone who I was with first noticing it).  

What a coincidence.  I found one last week.  (It's still lying there, dried,
on top of my television set...)  This was growing on a clover plant the
rest of whose clovers were all 3 leaved.  (Red clover, I think, if I remember
my clovers correctly.)  Upon closer inspection, I noticed that all 4 leaves
weren't _quite_ at the same spot; two grew out of one spot on the stem, and
a third went out for a millimeter or two before branching out into two
leaf stems and providing the other two leaves.

As a kid I remember this patch where I would always find them; sometimes they
would even have 5 or 6 leaves, but never more (I don't _think_).  So I
would guess that they are caused when something causes one of the leaves to
branch into two.

(Insert appropriate technical terms for leaves, leaflets, leaf stems, etc...
where I might have misused them.)
--
"The fact is self evident from the text and requires no supporting argument."
  --Tim Maroney

Kenneth Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!ins_akaa; BITNET: g49i0188@jhuvm;
     INTERNET: arromdee@crabcake.cs.jhu.edu) (please, no mail to arrom@aplcen)