chat thread for autistics & neurodivergents ♡

I’ve been into clovers since 5th/6th grade, if I recall correctly, after looking for four leaf clovers on a walk with my grandfather. We actually used to pick bagfuls of clover and sort through them at home to see if any were 4+ leafs, which I don’t really do much any more because I don’t have time for that but occasionally if it’s convenient I check nearby clover patches.

Anyway, when I used to pick bagfuls (again this started when I was like 10 and I still use pretty much the same organization system, so it’s not exactly perfect but it’s decent) I’d label the bags with the date and time harvested and the location (I’d use names I came up with using landmarks on the bags themselves but I have coordinates for them online). Later, after I’d searched the bags, I’d press any 4+ leaf clovers (or just ones that I found interesting for some other reason, like especially big ones or ones with other odd mutations). If it had been a while since the clovers were picked and they were beginning to wilt, I’d leave them in cups with water overnight to rehydrate them, then carefully dried them off and then pressed them. They were all pressed between paper towels under a stack of really heavy books for around a week, and I wrote the same info on the paper towels as was on the bags, as well as how many of each type of clover each paper towel contained (ex. “4 4-leafs, 3 5-leafs, 1 6-leaf”).

Even when I didn’t bring home giant bags of clover, I just did the same thing with pressing the 4+ leafs I’d picked. I’m really good at finding them just looking through a patch, partially because of practice with clover-finding specifically and because I’m used to looking for subtle details with other things, like bird identification.

Anyway, I know which patches around places I frequent are likely to have 4+ leaf clovers and which aren’t by now, as when you find one, you’re generally far likely to find more. I’ve searched several patches intensively and not found a single one, and others I’ve only looked at for like five minutes before finding 30. One such example was the one at my school, way back when I first got into this in 5th/6th grade (I forget which). In that patch, I found 20ish four-leafs, several 5-leafs, two 6-leafs, and a 7-leaf (highest I’ve ever found!) in minutes. I still have all of them, but especially the 7-leaf; I know right where it is because I have it in a little clear plastic holder keychain thing. It’s still in good condition, though its color has faded to brown since it’s so old.

But yeah, I have hundreds of these things, and I wish I could do more intensive studies on them to figure out what exactly causes 4+ leaf clovers. I figure it’s partially genetic but also partially environmental, based on my observations, since they tend to come in clusters but it’s also not guaranteed, and I’ve noticed I have better luck finding them earlier in the spring, and on the edges of their patches oftentimes. They also tend to have a high incidence of occurrence on all my school campuses 5th/6th grade through high school, which made me joke that they were all built on toxic waste dumps or something.