Shigeo Obara, a farmer in Japan’s Iwate prefecture discovered a clover last week with an amazing 21 leaves! The current world record is an 18-leaf clover, which Obara himself grew in 2002.
Obara, a former food crop researcher, has been conducting independent research on clovers in his garden for over 50 years. He first became interested in clover mutations after discovering an unusual patch of 4-leaf clovers in 1951. Since then, Obara has been crossbreeding the plants in his garden to research the genes associated with leaf count, color, pattern and size.
Obara plans to file a new application with Guinness, although he is considering waiting a while. “We are likely to find clovers with more leaves,” he says. Last month, a family member claimed to have found a 27-leaf clover, but the discovery was not confirmed.
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Comments (19)
If I remember biology, extra leaves in a clover is a recessive trait. Dominant traits such as normal leaves well affect the plant more than the extra leaves trait. If you breed two plants with extra leaves, the trait stays with the offspring so it also has extra leaves. Keep doing this, and eventually you will get a plant with a lot of leaves.
Not confirmed because that family member ate the 27-leaf clover.
p.s i would like to see more pictures.
That's hw I found this page; I was checking the web to see if I had a world record on my hands. Sadly not. By a LONG way!
56 leaf clover grown by the same Japanese farmer!!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/photogalleries/week-in-news-pictures-130/photo4.html
~Shay