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A three-leaved clover, the emblem of Ireland.
Also known as: Irish clover
A young sprig of clover with three leaflets, and Ireland's national emblem. Tradition holds that Saint Patrick used it to explain the Trinity — a story with no early source, which the record notes rather than repeats as fact.
The national emblem of Ireland, worn on Saint Patrick's Day and used as an Irish identifier worldwide.
The name comes from the Irish seamróg, a diminutive meaning 'little clover'. Which species is meant has never been settled botanically.
The story that Saint Patrick used the three leaves to explain the Trinity is widely repeated but appears in no source earlier than the eighteenth century, more than a thousand years after his life.
The association is genuine and old; the attribution to Patrick himself is not evidenced in early sources.
Three rounded heart-shaped leaflets radiating from a single point at the top of a short stem.
Count the leaves: three is the Irish emblem, four is the luck token. The two are not the same symbol and mean unrelated things.