What is a shamrock?

Ah, 'tis a fine day to answer such a question.  In the local garden shoppe there were lots of quite handsome "shamrocks" for sale, and TPP has a couple of Irish women who like to be remembered with a little something on St. Patrick's day, and neither are fond of Irish whisky with a pickle juice chaser (no joke).  If anything will ruin the taste of good whisky, it's pickle brine; it can even ruin the taste of not so good whisky. But back to topic. The plants were Oxalis, wood sorrel. While a handsome enough plant this is not the true shamrock, if indeed, such a plant exists.  The whole idea of the shamrock was to commemorate the trinity via a plant with 3 leaflets, the seamrog, (accent mark in there somewhere), a common name for a clover.  Quite a few clovers have leaves with three leaflets and are appropriately names Trifolium.  At least 2 species in Ireland could be considered the true shamrock, but it certainly isn't wood sorrel.  And of course if lucky enough you may find one of those leaves with a development abnormality, 4 leaflets.  Happy St. Patrick's Day.  Oh, no wood sorrel for Mrs. Phactor, but some really bright and cheerful phony peonies for her office.

Friday Fabulous Flowers - Alpine Tundra

To complete this week's mini-series of blogs on Rocky Mountain alpine tundra you just knew the FFF would be something from way up there, so not to disappoint here are actually two dicot flowers, and a bit of grass. When two low, small-leafed mound forming plants grow close to each other it often is difficult to figure out where one ends and the other begins. Actually most of the leaves you see belong to the clover (Trifolium dasyphyllum), but it's difficult to see their trifoliate nature (note the upper most leaf on the right side). The yellow flower is Sedum lanceolatum (?) and its short succulent leaves are barely visible. A 3x5 file card would cover the whole field of view. The grass may be a wild rye.