White Clover (Trifolium Repens)

April 14, 2024

This following is an excerpt from the winning Corrington Essay! Keep reading to read all of it. Congratulations to Jadyn Nourse!

I didn’t have the same primary school experience that most of my peers had. I didn’t enjoy playful recesses. I didn’t play pretend on the monkey bars or chase my friends across the school grounds. I was different.

When I was in 3rd grade, my teachers and peers started noticing that I wasn’t going to grow up like everyone else. I have a specific memory of the day that everything changed for me. I started developing gross, nervous habits due to undiagnosed ADHD, habits that would repel everyone, even the adults I thought I could trust. I was having difficulty with something in class one day, so I raised my hand politely to ask the teacher a question. This teacher, who I now realize looking back was quite ableist, decided to stop her explanation to call out my habit of picking my nostrils in front of the entire class. From that day, I never joined in a game of “house” again.

So, when the recess bells rang every day after lunch, I had nowhere to go. Eventually, I sought shelter in the lush patches of white clovers that grew boundlessly across my elementary school playground. For some, unknown reason, I found myself compelled to search deeply for some sign of luck, that sign being the rare variety of clover that had four leaves rather than three. While my classmates were screaming and yelling about who hit who and who was it or not, my attention was firmly held by those verdant clumps of shamrocks.

I may not be alone in this experience. After all, the white clover, or trifolium repens, has a wide range, popping up in yards all across North America, Europe, and Asia. Commonly thought of as a weed, this clover manages to survive in many climates around the world. The plant’s most notable trait are its three-leaves. The white clover specifically has white markings on each leaf that resemble a bright crescent moon. In the summertime, these green triple-leaved shoots are accompanied by white flowers that appear to be exploding like a firework. The white . . .