Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 8, 1995 TAG: 9506080035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JONATHAN HUNLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
John Dailey says he seldom plays the lottery.
Maybe he's making a mistake. Luck seems to be on his side.
Dailey and his family have found 140 four-leaf clovers in three weeks outside their home at Tinker Creek Apartments in Northeast Roanoke.
``This is the gold mine of four-leaf clovers right here,'' Dailey said proudly of the small patch where his family made their find.
Does Dailey feel lucky?
Well ...
``I got the thing from Ed McMahon,'' he said.
His wife, Joyce, joked that this would be the time when the $10 million would be theirs.
``When you have this many clovers, you're just sure to win,'' she said.
The family displayed their first 23 good-luck symbols on their kitchen table. Then they decided to store their keepsakes in a photo album, complete with the name of the finder and the dates of discovery on each page.
John Dailey said his sons, Joseph, 8, and Johnathan, 10, were excited about the first clover they found.
``I guess he [Joseph] figured that was the first and last one he'd find.''
Now, the Daileys find them all the time.
``Sometimes you can just walk across the yard and just see one without bothering to look,'' Dailey said.
The boys, both of whom attend Lincoln Terrace Elementary School, haven't bragged to their friends about the family's findings.
``They won't believe me,'' Joseph said.
Dailey, 44, said he had always thought four-leaf clovers were hard to locate. He had found only a couple in his life.
But now, he thinks patience is the key to the hunt.
``If you're willing to look for them, they're there,'' he said.
Duncan Porter, a professor of botany at Virginia Tech, said it is rare to find a clover with four leaves.
Five species of clovers exist in the Roanoke area and 10 can be found in the state, Porter said. What looks like a patch of clover typically is one plant. A clover is just a leaf of that plant and the leaves actually are called leaflets.
``Generally, the clovers do have three leaflets,'' he said.
According to Porter, the plant near the Daileys' apartment is one that produces leaves with an extra leaflet.
``In this case it's probably just a single individual that has four leaflets,'' he said. ``Usually it would be a developmental irregularity.''
David Wofford agreed. Wofford is an associate professor of plant genetics at the University of Florida who has done genetic studies of four-leaf clovers and has developed a strain of clover that is sold commercially.
Wofford said fewer than one out of 1,000 plants produce four leaflets. He said the plant near the Daileys' apartment must be one of those.
Kathryn Converse, a wildlife disease specialist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., wasn't impressed with the Daileys' clover count.
``I am not an expert on clover, but I pick dozens anytime I search through clover,'' she said via fax. ``I am sure I find 100 a year.''
And as for the old superstition, she doesn't think much of that, either.
``I have done this (as has my sister) since childhood,'' she said. ``There is definitely no connection to good luck.''
by CNB