Treboles

There are so many callejeros (strays) on the streets that when I'm walking to the university I always keep an eye on the sidewalk to make sure I'm not stepping in dog shit. I usually take the sidewalk in at a glance for a few meters and that way I'm able to not keep my eyes glued to the ground. As it happened, one morning a few weeks ago I was walking to Análisis Numérico and in one of these glances I also noticed a four-leaf clover in a clover patch next to the sidewalk. I wasn't looking at the grass or clovers, so it really was a stroke of luck that I found it.

(I'm going to admit that I stuck it in my math notebook in the vain hope that it would help me in the course.)

Jacobi method? Gauss-Seidel method? Fácil when you have a four-leaf clover.
(ps I figured out how to do legit picture captions!)

Since then, I've looked at the clover patches on my way to and from the university each day, slowing my pace down a bit as I walk by, but hadn't seen any more four-leaf clovers until today. This morning on my way to la micro to go to my internship I was in more of a hurry than usual since I was late, but I happened to spot a four-leaf clover. 

oops, squished a bit...

I put it in a little pocket of my backpack, thinking that it was a good sign for the day. On my way home after my práctica, I was in no rush. I strolled home, keeping an eye out for more lucky clovers... What a windfall - I found another four-leaf clover and a six-leaf clover!

The second four-leaf clover of the day

A bit hard to see the six leaves, but two are underneath the other four.

Really, four (or six) leaves rather than the usual three is a mutation, so I didn't understand why that would be considered lucky. So, I decided to research the origin of four-leaf clover as a symbol of fortune. I quickly discovered a number of things that made me feel not-so-lucky:

• the Guinness World Record for most leaves on a clover is 56 (picture here) 
• some people say that the Irish consider finding clovers of more than four leaves unlucky
• what I found are not even clovers

That's right, no clovers :(. I think I found some type of alfalfa, as shown here.

The cause for mutations that cause extra leaves to sprout hasn't been conclusively identified - some sources say it's environmental, some say it's genetic. (I think it's likely a combination of both.)

If you look carefully at the picture of my "clovers" you will see lots of spots on the leaves, particularly of the 6-leaf one. I'm pretty sure this means that it's diseased - as were most of the 3-leaf alfalfa plants that I saw.

So... now I have mutant and diseased alfalfa, whereas half an hour ago I had lucky clovers. But really, it's the same plant - it hasn't changed, just my perception of it. I'm going to choose to perceive my plants as lucky, diseased, mutant alfalfa.

All of my lucky alfalfa :)

Life is what you make of it!

p.s.

According to Wikipedia, "Alfalfa seeds were imported to California from Chile in the 1850s." aww yeah.