MOXEE — They say everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, but not everybody has a 250-year-old shamrock plant to prove it.
Mary Lane, 54, of Moxee has such a plant. That’s to say, she has one of its descendants. Lane’s ancestors brought the original over from Ireland in 1751 “to have a piece of Ireland,” and the family has shared bulbs from the line since then.
“It’s the best inheritance you can have,” she said last week at her home. “It’s an heirloom that can be passed down through the generations, and everyone can get some.”
Lane didn’t even know about the plant until she saw a 1975 South Idaho Press profile about a branch of her family there.
“One of the family treasures is an Irish shamrock which has passed from generation to generation since about 1750,” reads the article from that Burley, Idaho, weekly. “As a young bride, one of the great-great-grandmothers wanted to bring a bit of Ireland with her to the colonies.”
Lane, who had always been interested in her family’s history, wasn’t about to read that and let it pass unquestioned.
“My father gave me this article, and I asked my father, ‘Where’s my shamrock?’” she said with a laugh.
She got that shamrock in 1997 when she visited cousins in Idaho.
“I got mine from Aunt Mildred, from her daughter Shirley,” Lane said.
It’s a reminder of part of her family’s heritage that otherwise might have been forgotten entirely. The family tree has seen a lot of Dutch and some English influence in the 250 years since the original shamrock survived the overseas passage.
“If it weren’t for that plant, we might not have even known that we were Irish at all,” Lane said, decked out in a green turtleneck and a green bow in her hair.
She has already taken bulbs from her plants — kin to the original — and given them to cousins in the Yakima area. Those who take them can then pass them down through their own branches of the family tree, keeping alive that little “piece of Ireland” her ancestors brought over two and a half centuries ago.
“There’s just a wee bit of Irish blood in us now,” she said. “But the knowledge of it will be passed down.”

• Pat Muir can be reached at 577-7693, or at pmuir@yakimaherald.com.