THE SHAMEOCK 117 



THE SHAMROCK. 



As St. Patrick's Day comes round, the newspaper botanist 

 usually enlightens his readers with his views about the Shamrock : 

 this year, however, he has surpassed himself in the ingenuity and 

 inaccuracy of his conclusions. Tlie palm must be given to the 

 Daily News, which had already (Feb. 25) distinguished itself by 

 tha following paragraph relating*^ to the " Blue Primrose," of which 

 the writer seems now to have heard for the first time : — 



" Among the exhibits yesterday at the Royal Horticultural 

 Society was the blue primrose, a flower recently discovered by 

 Mr. Wilson, the famous plant cultivator, and double primroses were 

 shown closely resembling the purple lilac in colour. A flower related 

 to the English cowslip, namely, the Italian primrose, was also on 

 view. When the wind blows over the Italian hills, whereon this 

 flower grows, the leaves, which are dappled, ruffle, and suggest to the 

 onlooker a cloud burdened with snow." 



On March 19 the following paragraph appeared in the column 

 headed " Under the Clock," in which from time to time appear many 

 things " hard to be understood" in so far as they relate to facts. 



'* There was a fair amount of shamrock worn in London yesterday, 

 or, rather, the common clover which passes for shamrock. This plant 

 is now quite common in Ireland, and I received a small box of it 

 from Cork yesterday morning labelled "Shamrock from Ireland." 

 But it was not shamrock at all. Genuine shamrock is the beautiful 

 little wood-sorrel, the trefoil leaf of which is a brilliant green, and 

 which bears a geranium-like white flower. The clover which has 

 usurped the place of the traditional shamrock has no flower [!], and 

 the four-leaf variety is quite common." 



Comment upon this would only spoil it : an attempt to correct 

 some of its absurdities resulted in the following (March 20) : — 



"There are, it seems, at least four possible claimants to the 

 honour of being the real thing : White (or Dutch) clover. Black 

 medick, Wood Sorrel, Lesser yellow trefoil. I gather that the last 

 holds the field, and can be tested at the right time of year by its 

 yellow flowers, but Avood sorrel has a kind of semi-official claim. The 

 famous four leaves may happen on any of these varieties, I believe." 



How the shamrock is to be " tested by its yellow flowers," and 

 what is " the right time of year " for applying the test, the writer 

 does not say, but it is satisfactory that he has discovered that it lias 

 flowers. 



The Westminster Gazette, usually better informed, announced 

 (Mar. 17) that, "botanists believe that the genuine shamrock is the 

 wild wood-sorrel." Against this aspersion a protest was sent, in 

 which it was pointed out that general as well as local testimony 

 identified the shamrock with Trifolium minus, as evidenced by the 

 Dictionary of English Plant-Naines and by the late Nathaniel 

 Colgan's exhaustive paper on " The Shamrock in Ireland," to which 

 reference is made on p. 118. This, however, was combatted (Mar. 19) 

 by a correspondent who rehashed the farrago of inaccuracies given in 

 the unfortunate " popular " portion of Syme's English Botany, and, 



