shanTRAnex European Life

Irish Connections in Slovakia

I decided 17th March would be a good day for launching my Shantranex European Life blog because it’s Saint Patrick’s Day, the Irish national festival. I lived in Ireland for many years, but right now I’m in Slovakia, in the centre of Europe, so I’ve decided, today and throughout the rest of March, to feature any Irish connections I can find in this country.

Irish National Symbols

The official national symbols of Ireland are the Irish flag and the harp. Both of them can be seen outside the Irish embassy in Bratislava. The Embassy is located at Mostova 2 in the old town. It’s entrance is in the left-hand side of the Carlton Hotel building.

The title of the embassy is in three languages: Irish, English and Slovak.

A much better known Irish symbol is the three-lobed green leaf called the shamrock. According to legend, St Pat used it to teach the heathen Irish about the Holy Trinity. In Ireland it’s traditional to pin a sprig of it onto your jacket on St Patrick’s day. I’ve seen it growing wild in County Clare, and in March 2000 I bought some commercially grown shamrock and scanned a piece of it.

Does Shamrock Grow in Slovakia?

But now it’s March 2007 and I’m shamrockless in Bratislava. A couple of days ago I started wondering whether I could find some of it growing here. The first thing I did was search for “shamrock plant” on the Internet to find out which species it is and where it grows.

I was surprised to find various Oxalis species labelled as shamrock. Their leaves do have three lobes, and some are the right shape, but others are rather oddly triangular. Most of them have the necessary bright green colour too, although there are some purple varieties, but it isn’t what I know as shamrock. The leaves are much too big for one thing.

A bit of further investigation showed me that all the sites featuring Oxalis shamrocks were American. Well I suppose everything is bigger in America, including St Patrick’s day:-) Some Oxalis species, also known as wood sorrell, do grow wild in Ireland, and St Pat could have used them for his sermons, but I don’t think it’s the real, traditional Irish shamrock.

After a bit more searching I came across “the true shamrock plant”, Trifolium repens. I know this better as White Clover. It’s very common all over Ireland and is often considered a weed. It is green and the leaves are the right shape, but it’s not the kind of shamrock a man in Clare once showed me.

Further searching brought up a few more possible species. Trifolium pratense or red clover, no that’s not it. Medicago lupulinus or black medick, that’s a bit more like it. Trifolium minus was mentioned a few times, then I discovered it’s been renamed Trifolium dubium. Ah yes, I think that’s the one!

Later in the season Trifolium dubium has small yellow clover-like flowers, and it has several other common names besides shamrock e.g. lesser trefoil, least hops clover, suckling clover. It’s distributed widely in Europe and many other parts of the world, so there seems to be no reason why I shouldn’t find it in Slovakia.

Hunting for Shamrock in Bratislava

The next step was to go out and see if I could find some shamrock.

And there, right outside my front door, was this shamrock-like plant, a species of Oxalis. It’s growing in a clump at the edge of the lawn, and also in some cracks in the concrete. A few early buds show that it will have yellow flowers. There’s also a bronze-leaved version. Irish-Americans would probably be satisfied with this as shamrock, but I continued hunting.

A bit further away, in some public grassy areas, I came across some Trifolium repens, or white clover. The whitish marks on its leaves are distinctive. There was a lot of it about.

White clover was also very plentiful in the lawns of the Medical Garden, where I looked next. Then in one corner, while crawling on hands and knees, I found this little plant. It’s small enough to be shamrock, and the leaves have three leaflets, but they are shaped more like Oxalis. Is it a different species, or just a stunted specimen?

After that I headed into the town centre, and there, in a concrete, weed infested planter behind Tesco’s, I found this. It’s similar to shamrock, but I don’t think it’s quite right.

I decided that that was enough shamrocks for one day, and I took all my samples home. I’m going to try growing them in order to identify them better. Help from any botanists reading this would also be appreciated. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes open for other possible candidates.

Later on I read this statement from Irish botanist Dr Charles Nelson:

“It must be stressed that there is no one plant, unique to Ireland, which alone bears the name shamrock.”

In his 1988 shamrock survey, which had similar results to Nathaniel Colgan’s 1893 shamrock survey, he discovered that Irish people could wear any one of four different plant species on St Patrick’s day.

Obviously, Irish-grown shamrock is the best, but if you can’t get any, and you have a plant near at hand on 17^th March that looks to you like shamrock, then it is shamrock and you should wear it with pride, even if you don’t have a drop of Irish blood in you.