White Clover (Trifolium Repens)
Photo by S&E Ward’s Landscape Management, Inc.
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 petals fade to a rose pink at the bottom, like the azure hue at the base of a fire.
Oddly enough, these widespread, grass-like weeds are in the legume family, more commonly known as the bean family. This means that the clover is more closely related to the green beans commonly found on a plate of southern American dinner than the blades of grass found in lawns.
If one were to look up information about the white clover, the most common result would likely be how to remove it. This is because the species is considered a weed, something to be removed. Those flowers that try so hard to be beautiful like the others are dismissed simply because they don’t grow the right way or in the right places.
I have another memory here. I once spent quite a bit of time in my backyard picking what I thought were beautiful flowers for my mother. When I brought them inside, she dismissed them and said they were “just weeds.” I had to throw out my carefully curated flower arrangement, to the disappointment of my eight-year-old self.
Why do we dismiss plants because they are in a certain category? Sure, they may get in the way of our gardening, but they can still produce beautiful flowers. The flowers that bloom from “weeds” aren’t so easily dismissed by the buzzing bees that need them for pollination. Perhaps they can exist in a state equilibrium: we can see weeds as troublesome pests while at the same time admiring their usefulness and beauty.
And what of people? Oftentimes people like me are considered weeds by society. It’s hard to find a place where we truly belong and fit in. But, like the daring clover, we grow anyway, despite what society or the gardening world considers “acceptable.” They have their “weedkillers”, their rules, their conformity, that they try to push on us. They tell us to be perfect flowers. But we’ll be our own flowers, the kind with beauty without comparison.
The white clover never cared whether it fit in. In fact, the adaptable plant has fought for its place in a growingly human world. Scholars have noted, when referring to the white clover, that, “a cosmopolitan plant has adapted to environmental gradients.” Both cities and rural areas have seen instances of this plant. They pop up in the sidewalks, in the parks, in places where people trod. Resiliant plants as white clovers are, they live on in spite of us.
Thus, people like me who don’t tend to fit in where they should will also find a way to belong. We will find our place amongst our peers, and even outside of those circles.. Like massive patches of white clover, we’ll find each other in this world and grow alongside one another, lifting ourselves up and making beautiful flowers and greens. When the societal world tries to build concrete and cities where we try to grow, we’ll grow right through the cracks of those sidewalks and push greenery onto their monochrome world.
Of course, the point in my childhood frolicks through white clover patches was to find the rumored four-leaf variety. I had found several, each one adding joy to my day. I’d gather a bunch every time and hand them off to a teacher I liked or my mother. Perhaps I was quite lucky. After all, it is said that a four-leaf white clover only blossoms one in ten thousand times. Primary school me perhaps had a blessing from Lady Luck, at least when it came to finding a particular type of bean sprout in my school playground.
Looking back, maybe I could have learned a lesson in all of this. At the time, I was chastising and hating myself for not being like the other kids. I resented my social unawareness and uniqueness that pushed me to those patches in the first place. But the entire time, perhaps those white clover patches called me for a reason. Perhaps they were trying to tell me, “Look over here, we have differences. But we still stick together.” I didn’t get excited when I found a three-leaf clover that stood in like the rest. I got excited when I found a four-leaf clover that, when it found itself fitting in just fine, dared itself to grow one more leaf. Maybe it grew that leaf just for me, to make an eight-year-old autistic girl just a little bit happier, and to try to make her hate herself a little less. To say, “You don’t hate being different. You actually love it.” With clovers, I picked being different over being the same. I should’ve done so with myself then, too.
After a few years of shutting myself away and searching through clovers, I was about ready to leave primary school. I had gotten tired of the constant bullying and subsequent solitary clover-hunting. My mother had told me that I was being pulled out of school to go to virtual school, long before COVID-19 forced everyone to do the same. One day, before our final day of fifth grade, my teacher pulled me aside to give me something. It was a strange rock, with the words “luck of the Irish” engraved and a clover with green sequins in it. She said it was because I was always finding her those four-leaf clovers that I treasured so much. Likewise, I treasured that gift. I still have it on my bookshelf at home. When I look at it, I go back to those days. I remember the hard times, but also remember the glimmer of hope those four green leaves would give me.
Now, years later, like the four-leaf clover, I’ve found my place amongst my kind. I’ve accepted my differences and allowed people to accept them as well. I’ve found a crack in the sidewalk to grow in, and others to grow with me. I’ve accepted within myself that I might be a weed, but I’ll grow in spite of the weedkillers that try to assimilate me with the perfect flowers. When I reentered the world of physical school in freshman year of high school, people passed me and said, “That’s the clover girl.” I was embarrassed by it then, but I’ll embrace the title now. I am the clover girl, growing in spite of the world in my own way. And when I pass a patch of white clovers in the grass, I scan it for one amongst thousands hoping to find a four-leaf, calling upon the luck that gave me hope so many years ago. And sometimes, I find one, and remember what it truly means to be special.
Works Cited
Masclef, Amédée. Atlas des plantes de France. 1891. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 22 Oct. 2023
Davenport, Millie. “White Clover.” Edited by Joey Williamson, Home & Garden Information Center | Clemson University, South Carolina, 20 Aug. 2021, hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/white-clover/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2023
Albano, Lucas J., and Johnson, Marc T. J. “Interactions between Environmental Factors Drive Selection on Cyanogenesis in Trifolium Repens.” Oikos, vol. 2023, no. 5, May 2023, pp. 1–12. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.centenary.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/oik.09629.
Song, IJ., Kang, HG., Kang, JY. et al. Breeding of four-leaf white clover (Trifolium repens L.) through 60Co gamma-ray irradiation. Plant Biotechnol Rep 3, 191–197 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11816-009-0091-x
