Shamrock
The shamrock ( Irish seamróg [ˈʃamˠɾˠoːɡ] , dt. "Young clover") is the unofficial national symbol of Ireland , a three-leaved specimen of the clover species white clover (Irish seamair bhán ), red clover (Irish seamair dhearg ) or thread clover (Irish seamair bhuí ). At the end of the 19th century in particular , there was disagreement among gardeners and botanists as to which type of clover the shamrock was based on. The British naturalist Nathaniel Colgan and the Irish botanist Ernest Charles Nelson finally identified the thread clover as the most commonly collected shamrock on the basis of the flowering time and the flowers themselves. The shamrock is one of the attributes of Saint Patrick , the patron saint of the Irish, as he gave them during his missionary work the Trinity is said to have explained using the shamrock.
The shamrock is also a special form of the heraldic shamrock , which as a rule has no closer relation to Ireland. The unicode symbol of the shamrock is U + 2618 ☘. It is not to be confused with the symbol of the four-leaf clover .
The Irish airline Aer Lingus uses the shamrock as a company logo.
literature
- Mary L. Mulvihill: Ingenious Ireland: A County-by-County Exploration of the Mysteries and Marvels of the Ingenious Irish . Simon and Schuster, Dublin 2003, ISBN 9780684020945 , pp. 351 & 352.
- Angela Wright, Margaret Linehan: Ireland: Tourism and Marketing . Blackhall, Dublin 2004, ISBN 9781842180785 , page 33.