That passion eventually brought him down to Georgia to pursue his doctorate. Pennetti has been breeding clover ever since. Vincent Pennetti holds a white clover plant bred to bloom red flowers. Pennetti reached out for advice from Parrott, who in turn gave him pointers on plant breeding over Skype. That’s around the time he learned about Parrott’s research concerning multifoliate clover genetic markers at the University of Georgia. I was just standing around looking for four-leaf clovers.”īut he wasn’t having any luck at that either.Įventually, as a high schooler waiting for the bus, he finally spotted a pair of four-leaf clovers. So coaches sent him to the outfield, where he would be less of a defensive liability. “My parents really wanted me to be good at baseball,” Pennetti recalled. Pennetti’s long fascination with clover started while playing little league in Long Island, New York. “If daylight or temperatures aren’t right, you won’t see it.”īut at other times, five, six, or as many as eight leaves will show up. “It’s been a really tough trait to do,” Parrott said. Parrott, a Distinguished Research Professor in Crop and Soil Sciences, also found the location of other genes that can add red coloring to white clover’s leaves.īut even with markers that could be associated with the four-leaf clover trait, it isn’t exactly easy to “make your own luck.” The four-leaf trait doesn’t always show up when expected, even if the genes are present. It was Boston, not New York.Vincent Pennetti, a second-year UGA plant breeding and genetics student, found his passion for plant breeding by searching for four-leaf clovers. The original version of this story misstated the location of the first U.S. Patrick’s Day has lost its religious meaning, it seems that the value of the shamrock itself is not going anywhere. Though Cronin says the way we regard the shamrock as a symbol of St. Patrick’s Day as the ninth-largest card-sending holiday in the U.S., and Bradbeer says approximately 7 million cards are expected to be exchanged this year. Patrick’s Day, and of course, Bradbeer says, all of the products focus on the color green. The shamrock remains one of the most popular symbols used on Hallmark products and cards for St. “The Irish emblem has been at the heart of the Aer Lingus brand for more than 80 years, and it will continue to sit proudly across all of our aircraft,” he said in a statement. Even when the company rebranded this January, its CEO made clear that the shamrock wasn’t going anywhere. Irish airline Aer Lingus, for example, adopted the shamrock as its logo. With the plant established as a symbol of Ireland, Irish brands caught on and helped spread the idea around the world. The company actually started with postcards of shamrocks in 1910-1915, before making official cards for the holiday itself, she says. “The most popular symbol was the shamrock,” Bradbeer told TIME in an email. Patrick’s Day in the 1920s, the design they should use on their greeting cards was clear. Patrick’s Day parade was celebrated in Boston in the 1760s, according to Samantha Bradbeer, historian and archivist for Hallmark. So, while they celebrated their heritage with parties and parades, they substituted the color green and images of the shamrock for the plant itself. in the 18th century, there were no shamrocks growing in New York or Boston or San Francisco. When a wave of Irish immigrants came to the U.S. Patrick’s Day.)” Continuing to explain why the plant was relevant that day, specifically, Threlkeld said, “It being a Current Tradition, that by this Three Leafed Grass, he emblematically set forth to them the Mystery of the Holy Trinity.” (The writer then goes on to remark on the “debauchery” and “excess in liquor” that was partaken in on that sacred day.) Day of March yearly, (which is called St. Threlkeld wrote: “This Plant is worn by the People in their Hats upon the 17. The Irish botanist and cleric Caleb Threlkeld wrote a treatise on Ireland’s native plants in 1726 that explained the shamrock as the country’s national symbol, and asserted its significance in the context of St.
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