The “shamrock” plant you buy for St. Patrick’s Day at your local nursery or grocery store is usually a wood sorrel (also called “oxalis”). It is sold as a shamrock because:
A) The actual shamrock is unimpressively small B) The sale of shamrocks is illegal C) The true shamrock is too hard to grow ü D) They are one and the same thing
The word shamrock comes from the Irish Gaelic seamrog or “little clover”. But if the true shamrock is a clover, and not oxalis, which clover is it? No one is quite sure. One popular candidate is Trifolium repens, or white clover, but some judge that species to be unacceptably coarse, and prefer the daintier Trifolium dubium (lesser clover, or hop clover). Either way, clover does not grow well as a house-plant, so the wood sorrel — also an Irish plant — has been adopted as a kind of honorary shamrock. The important thing is to have a plant with a three-lobed leaf, since St. Patrick was said to have used such a plant when explaining the Trinity to converts.
